International Business Machines Corporation

LeRoy Albert Krueger, Jr

Joseph L Hellerstein

Mark Steven Squillante

W Nathaniel Mills, Iii

Nagui Halim

Srirama Mandyam Krishnakumar

Willy W Chiu

Techniques for use in accordance with application performance decomposition are provided which take advantage of the communications protocol used to carry a transaction between application components in a distributed computing network. Specifically, the invention extends the communications protocol by embedding data, such as timestamp and duration measurement data, in the protocol itself, rather than extending or altering the application or transaction data carried by the protocol as in existing approaches. Thus, the invention provides natural correlation of interactions of distributed application components on such transactions without modification to the application or transaction data. Because the correlation is performed in-line with the application component interactions, minimal data management overhead is required, and correlated performance decomposition is made possible in real-time for the transaction. Furthermore, subsequent processing stages of the distributed application can interpret the communications protocol to glean processing durations of previous stages in order to make decisions regarding treatment of the transaction.

Method and system for embedding correlated performance measurements for distributed application performance decomposition

The present invention comprises a method of relating characteristics gleaned by monitoring application transaction flows (and the decomposition thereof) to produce performance metrics useful to characterize the efficiency and performance of web transactions used in a web-based application. These metrics can assist application designers and developers in reorganizing their application content, programs, and transports to provide improved service to their consumer. Events are generated and composed into predefined activities on a web transaction basis. The performance metric is then derived that entails a relationship between at least two different activities that gives insight into the performance characteristics of the web transaction. By using the derived performance metrics, designers and developers of web pages can judge the effects of changes to their application relative to efficiency and performance. Different applications can also be compared and contrasted using these metrics. Furthermore, these metrics may serve as inputs to planning models used to project capacity, throughput, response time, and availability of the application.

Method, computer program product, and system for deriving web transaction performance metrics

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Woodstock, GA, United States of America

LeRoy Albert Krueger, Jr