October 4, 2007

Transaction monitoring and reporting are a big part of Longitude’s agentless, multiplatform application performance and network monitoring capabilities. Longitude can monitor and report on everything from simple transactions such as ping and http to more complicated user experience-type transactions which are typically run synthetically. In this blog entry I will discuss the simple transactions that Longitude can monitor and then next week I will continue the conversation by discussing the higher-end user experience capabilities.

Although we are calling these transactions “simple,” testing pings, http, SQL queries, FTP and Telnet, etc. (click here to see a full list of the transactions that Longitude monitors) is certainly not unimportant. Rather, these are critical components that our customers must check to determine the health and responsiveness of applications that support business operations.

The transaction function not only tests the “if” of a transaction but it also tests the “how long.” For example, the ping transaction tests both whether or not a critical computer is up and running and how long it takes to reach it. It is the same with an http transaction. Longitude monitors if a web page is available and how long it takes to access it.

Additionally, users can define Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for transactions in the Manage SLAs function. In an SLA, Longitude can combine the measurement of a transaction with underlying infrastructure conditions. For example, if the response time from an http transaction indicates that a web page is loading slowly, Longitude’s SLA dashboards and reports can show whether it is caused by an issue with CPU, memory, network bandwidth, or maybe a back end database. Coupled with Longitude’s performance reports, event monitor, and alerting and action capabilities, SLAs help you manage more proactively and ensure maximum availability for critical business functions.

Another example of Longitude’s extensive transaction capabilities is the ability to write a user script and evaluate the output. For example, this might execute a command to query an in-house software application to request a status. You can instruct Longitude to execute the script and parse the returned output. Based on what is returned, Longitude can then create an event. This opens up a whole host of site-specific situations Longitude is capable of monitoring, which is a good segue into next week’s discussion about other customized, more sophisticated transactions – user experience transactions – that Longitude can also monitor. I hope you will check back next week to learn more about Longitude’s transaction capabilities.

Posted by Dick Levin, VP for Development