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About workflow statistics

Statistics collection provides performance data you can use to analyze and improve the performance of your system. You can generate statistics for rosters and queues.

All the work item and queue statistics fall into one of three categories: event summation statistics, sampling statistics, and current statistics.

Category Description Notes

Current statistics

Reflect the state of the running system at the time you request the information.

Current statistics are not stored in the statistics database.

Event summation statistics

Based on the accumulation of events during the specified collection period.

Periods of inactivity can have a misleading effect on event summation statistics. Periods of inactivity can occur when the Process Engine software is not operational due to a system failure or intentional shutdown (for example, for backing up the servers), or when the Process Engine software is operational, but no activity is taking place.

Sampling statistics

Result from an averaging of samples taken at regular intervals during the collection period.

The accuracy of sampling statistics increases as the number of samples increases.

For information on the statistics collected for rosters and queues, see Roster statistics or Queue statistics.

Enabling and configuring statistics

You can enable and disable statistics collection for each isolated region using the Process Configuration Console. See Managing statistical information in the online Help for the Process Configuration Console.

You can also specify a statistics collection interval for the VWService using the Process Configuration Console. The statistics snapshot interval defines how often statistical samples or “snapshots” are taken of the work in progress. Note that to make your changes to the statistics snapshot interval take effect, you must restart the Process Engine. For this reason, we recommend performing this procedure when the software is idle.

Use the Process Configuration Console to define the statistics snapshot interval for the VWService. For step-by-step instructions, see Specify a statistics collection interval.

Methods for retrieving and viewing statistics

You can retrieve statistical data about rosters and queues in a variety of ways.

Process Administrator

The Process Administrator application provides an easy way to display roster and queue statistics. See the section on "View workflow statistics" in Process Administrator Help for more information.

vwtool

Use the vwtool statistics command to view roster and queue statistics for a specified time interval.

Java and C APIs

You can also programmatically retrieve statistical information about rosters and queues. See the Help for Process Java API for further information.

How the Process Engine stores statistics

The Process Engine stores roster and queue statistics in separate tables in the database. Each Process Engine stores statistical information for the rosters and queues in each isolated region running on that server. Each isolated region has its own statistics tables. For example, if a server is part of a VWService with three isolated regions, that server contains three tables for roster statistics and three tables for queue statistics; the tables contain statistical information for roster- and queue-related events which occurred on that server.

On every Process Engine, each isolated region has its own statistics tables. Statistics are first stored in a statistics cache, then written to the database on the Process Engine where the affected roster or queue resides. Note that changing the location of a roster or queue results in the loss of the statistics for the roster or queue once the change is committed.

Statistics database maintenance

The statistics database tables can grow quickly with statistics collection enabled for the isolated region. The system administrator must periodically perform the following maintenance tasks on the statistics tables in the database:

  • Purge unnecessary data from the statistics tables.
  • Coalesce roster and queue statistics.

Use vwlog to coalesce statistics and purge statistics data on the current server. See the online Help for the vwlog utility for more information.