Payload Data
Transaction payload data is information from the transaction not associated with the transaction ID or other required operational data used to monitor the transaction. This might be any transaction data extracted from a message or string supplied to the BTM API such as customer information, pricing information, or order details.
Payload data is used in real-time such as on business views, service-level agreement metrics, and events (for example, trigger an event when the SLA for a transaction larger than $10,000 is exceeded).
Transaction data is retained for the life of the transaction, and optionally captured in high-resolution history where it is:
- Stored together with operational data
- Compacted for reduced size requirements
- Highly optimized for database inserts
- Capable of supporting high volume rates
All transaction data is purged from the high resolution database after 40 days by default. This value can be configured by changing the amount_of_hires_to_keep stanza in services.cfg. Refer to Defining-configuration-options-in-services-cfg for details about this file and its parameters. If you want to maintain high resolution data for a longer time frame, you must export the data to your own tables.
The following table lists the required and optional fields to configure payload data for this activity.
Field name | Description | Rqd |
|---|---|---|
Name | Name of the user-defined data. When using an instrumented application, this is the only required field. The name must be unique. No character limit. | x |
Activity Metrics | Historical statistics about this activity are collected and can be used in reports. The following payload value statistics apply to numeric data. For non-numeric data, only the Count statistic is available: |
|
Alias | If you want to use payload data as an alias in addition to any identifier you created on the Transaction/Alias ID tab, you can create it using this field. See Transaction/Alias ID. Aliasing must also be enabled at the model level. |
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Enabled | If you want to enable payload data availability for a technology. This is not visible for user-defined payloads. Technology data must be enabled before the field is visible in an SLA Filter or Completion criteria. |
|
History template | Allows history collection of the published SLA metrics allowing use of reports and trend charts. |
|
Events (located on a separate tab) | Several event templates can be selected for association with the payload. See Best practices with BTM transaction pathways for details. |
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Max Number of Labels | Limits the number of potentially false label/ payload data pairs when collecting activity metrics and using multiple payload data. Every label/payload data pair is added to the physical tree so that you can configure history or events. However, it is possible to have erroneous label/payload data pairs in the physical tree if a message format is misconfigured or if a message is received that was not expected. If you define five labels, the first five labels that are published from the TMTM Topic Service appear and are used in the BTM Transaction Payload Data Metrics. Any other labels are ignored and do not appear in the Monitor Console. The default is 1. If you change this value, then you set the limit to the number of labels that appear under BTM Transaction Payload Data Metric. For more information and data and labels, see Data and Label. |
|
Use as Timestamp | If this payload value should be used as a timestamp to override the normal timestamp of the technology being monitored. |
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Timestamp Format | When this payload value should be used as a timestamp this field specifies the format of the data derived from the message format. There are two formats allowed:
| Required when Use as Timestamp selected. |
You can define additional payload at the monitoring point level. For details, see Overriding an activity's association configuration.