Analyzing business transactions

Analyze business transactions to locate transaction entry points that are slow or have errors and that could be impacting your users.

The business transactions table displays aggregation statistics for various application entry points. For databases, the business transactions table shows the transactions that queried the selected database.

App Visibility monitors the requests by several types of technologies, including the following kinds of requests:

HTTP and HTTPS requests to a Web tier or outbound requests from Web or Business tiers to external services
Java Message Service (JMS) message tracing
Enterprise JavaBean (EJB) remote invocation through RMI, COBRA, or WebLogic T3 (Note that EJB2 applications running on WebSphere Application Server 7 are not supported.)

By default, the business transactions table displays transactions that have occurred in the selected five minutes, sorted in descending order according to the maximum duration.

This topic describes the contents of the business transactions table, which you can see after drilling down from Web and Business tiers, or from the Database tier. Data is displayed in the business transactions table according to the selected filters.

Business transaction table

The following table describes the contents of each column.

Contents of the business transaction table

Column	Description
Action menu	For a specific transaction, select Show Traces to see a list of interactions between end-user requests and the path the requests follow through the web application's monitored servers.
Name	Transaction or request name, usually derived from the URL
Type	Classification of the transaction, either as a full business transaction or as single request within a transaction A Transaction type is determined by the first monitored application server that receives a request within the application. Typically, the first application server to receive a request is associated with the Web tier. The name of this first request is the name of the transaction. As a transaction flows between application servers, subsequent transaction requests on monitored application servers are designated as Request types. Note: If an entry point applies to both a Transaction and Request type at the same time, then invocations to the Transaction type are ignored. For example, if a web service is accessed by an application server with an App Visibility agent (that is, a Request type), and by a non-monitored component (such as a PHP server or an AJAX request from a browser—a Transaction type), then requests from the non-monitored component are ignored.
Total	Total number of entry points that occurred during the defined time filter Not all entry points are persisted by the App Visibility system.
With Errors	Percentage of entry points that resulted in an error, whether a thrown exception or a returned error. In parentheses following the percentage, the number of occurrences on which the percentage is based is displayed Error events include the following situations: Transactions or requests that returned an error code or an exception, which typically indicates an application availability issue. You can configure which HTTP error codes trigger events with the application SLA thresholds. Failure to access external resources, such as a web service, database, or message service. Drill down to transaction traces for more information about the transaction errors.
With Latency Violations	Percentage of entry points that breached the App Visibility agent threshold. In parentheses following the percentage, the number of occurrences on which the percentage is based is displayed.
Average	Average time (0m 0s 000ms) of the transactions that occurred within the defined time filter
Max	Duration (0m 0s 000ms) of the longest transaction within the defined time filter

Filtering business transactions

After you drill down to business transactions from a Web or Business tier, the transactions are automatically filtered by the selected application server and five-minute range from the Application View. After you drill down from the Database tier, the business transactions table shows the transactions that queried the selected database during the five-minute range from the Application View.

You can adjust the filters to locate the transactions that you want to analyze. Use one or more of the following filters:

To change the time range
To filter by transaction name
To filter by all monitored application servers
To filter by transaction summaries

To change the time range

Click the action menu next to the currently selected time range.
Select a predefined time range from the menu, or select Customize to enter a different time range.
If you select Customize, select a Start time and an End time, and click Done.
Ensure that the start time is earlier than the end time.

The time range is modified, and the displayed data reflects the change in the time range.

The collected data and metrics are recalculated and updated every five minutes.

To filter by transaction name

To filter by transaction name, enter text in the search box to the right of the time filter.

To filter by all monitored application servers

To remove the application server filter, and see captured business transactions for all the monitored application servers in the selected time, click the close icon next to the server filter.

When you drill down further, the server filter applies to the subsequent pages: Traces and Trace Details. Likewise, if you remove the server filter from the Business Transactions page, the subsequent pages are not filtered by server.

To filter by transaction summaries

The summary filter enables you to quickly see the problematic transactions in the defined time range.

Click the relevant summary box to display all transactions, or to display only the transactions that have latency violations or errors.

Example

Summary filter example

You can filter transactions in the following ways:

Click Latency Violations to see the transactions that exceeded the defined performance thresholds.
Click Errors to show the transactions with errors that exceeded the defined availability thresholds.
Click both summary filters to see all transactions that have latency violations, errors, or both.

Navigating the interface

Move between pages of the Application Monitoring and Application View interface.

To return to the Application page, click the arrow next to the page Application Monitoring title.
To move up from the drill-down pages of the Application View, click a breadcrumb title. For example, to move from the Business Transactions page to the Application View page, click the title. Likewise, after you drill-down to Traces and Trace Details, you can easily move back using the breadcrumb titles.

Navigation elements in the Application Monitoring page

Where to go from here

Review the trace list for a selection

Page tree