New features of the Resource Analyzer

FixPak 2 of WebSphere Application Server Version 4.0 offers several new features for the Resource Analyzer:

Viewing summary reports

Summary reports provide an overall picture on how the different application and runtime components are performing. These reports are available for each application server. To view the reports, click on the application server in the left-hand tree.

The reports are organized in tabs. The first three tabs apply to application components and are as follows:

Servlets
Lists all servlets in the application server with the total requests processed, the average response time in milliseconds, and their product (total requests x average response time).
EJBs
Lists enterprise beans with the number of method calls, the average response time, and their product. If EJB method level reporting is enabled, you can expand each EJB to see the method level data.
EJB Methods
Lists all EJB methods with the number of calls and the average response time in milliseconds.

These three reports use a table format with a time stamp for each record. To sort the column values except for Time, click the table column header.

The next set of tabs provide information on the following WebSphere pools:

Web container thread pool
Provides two graphs:
Pool usage graph
Graphs the number of active threads and pool size over time.
Throughput and response time graph
Graphs throughput (requests processed per second) and response time (in milliseconds) over time.
ORB thread pool
Provides two graphs:
Pool usage graph
Graphs the number of active threads and pool size over time
Throughput and response time graph
Graphs throughput (requests processed per second) and response time (in milliseconds) over time.
Database connection pool
Shows the pool usage graph for each data source separately.

The graphs are scaled to the current y-axis and the graph legend displays the scale factor. To change the y-axis range, use the arrows along the y-axis. The scale increments or decrements by 100 and the minimum y-axis value is 100.

Enabling and disabling reports

The Resource Analyzer gathers report data from individual modules such as Web application and thread pool. You must set the instrumentation level for these modules to the correct level and start modules to enable proper reporting. To do so, use the Reports menu.

To enable reports, select Enable Reports from the Reports menu. You can enable reports either including or excluding EJB methods. Note that EJB methods are at "Max" level and PMI may result in performance degradation. This function sets the appropriate instrumentation level and starts the modules.

To disable reports, select Disable Reports from the Reports menu. Disabling reports stops all of the reporting modules and sets the instrumentation level to None.

To clear the report graphs, select Clear Reports from the Reports menu.

Understanding the recursive action

The Resource Analyzer actions Start, Stop, Reset to Zero, Get value and Clear value affect the selected module and all sub-modules recursively. For instance, starting the Web Applications module starts the monitoring of all sub-modules under Web Applications. This applies to all items in the left-hand tree, excluding WebSphere Domain and Node.

Graphing load type counters

Load type counters such as Pool size have a current value and a time-weighted average value. In chart mode, both of these values are graphed when you select the counter for display from the bottom panel.

Highlighting graphs

In chart mode, highlight a graph by selecting the corresponding counter from the list of counters in the bottom panel.

Resetting to zero when logging on

The Reset to zero action records and replays when performed while logging is on.

Viewing data in the Change in Value mode

When you view data in the Change in value mode, the Averages and Time-weighted averages (Stat and Load counters) data represent averages for the given time interval. For instance, with the refresh interval of 10 seconds, the change in value represents the average value of the counter for the interval t1 and t1+10.