Generating report data with the BMC Synthetic Transaction SLA Report utility

Use the BMC Synthetic Transaction SLA Report utility to generate data for building SLA reports. The SLA Report utility aggregates raw data, on a daily basis, from all collectors that are connected to your App Visibility Portal. Aggregated data is for a 24-hour period (midnight-midnight). You can use this data to create reports in the reporting tool of your choice. 

The SLA Report utility is included with the installation files of the TEA Agent. Aggregation is disabled on your App Visibility collectors by default. You must enable it before running the SLA Report Utility.

You can run the utility interactively, with no input on the command line, and the utility prompts you for the necessary parameters; or you can run the utility with all of the parameters included in a single command line.

To enable aggregation

Before running the the SLA Report utility, you must enable aggregation on all collectors for which you want to generate data. When you enable aggregation, data is aggregated for the previous day. Earlier data is not aggregated. After you enable aggregation, it continues on a daily basis unless you disable it.

1. From the installationDirectory\collector\properties directory,open the collector.properties file.
2. Search for the active.task.syntheticslaaggregationtask parameter and change the value to true.
3. Restart the App Visibility collector service.

To run the SLA Report utility interactively

1. Run the sla_report_tool batch file from the \Disk1\utility\SLAReportTool folder from the TEA Agent installation.
   A command prompt window opens. 

2. Enter the following required parameters when you are prompted.

   Parameter	Description
   Start Time	Starting time of the time range you want to include in your report data Enter one of the following formats: Epoch-time time stamp Date in the following format: dd/MM/yyyy
   End Time	End time of the time range you want to include in your report data Enter one of the following formats: Epoch-time time stamp Date in the following format: dd/MM/yyyy
   App Visibility Portal Host Name or IP Address	Host name or IP address of your App Visibility Portal
   App Visibility Portal port number	Port number of your App Visibility Portal Default value: 8100
   Hierarchy Report	Y or N to indicate whether you want to generate mapping and hierarchy files
   Output Format	Enter one of the following values: C—.csv file Z—Zipped .csv file B—Both .csv and zipped .csv

To run the SLA Report utility from a single command line

1. Open a command prompt.
2. Change to the \Disk1\utility\SLAReportTool directory in your TEA Agent installation.
3. Use the following syntax to run the SLA Report utility from the command line:

sla_report_tool -s "<start time>" -e "<end time>" -i "<host name/IP>" -p "<port number>" -r "y/n" -o "c/z/b"

For detailed instructions, use the -h command line option. 

See the previous procedure for details about the parameters.

Files generated by the SLA Report utility

The utility generates the following files:

• .csv report—in the \Disk1\utility\SLAReportTool\reports folder
  

  This file is generated if you entered C or B for your output format. The file name is made up of the time stamps of the time range included in the report, separated by an underscore. For example, 1419984000000_1420070400000. The data in the file is aggregated by day, Execution Plan, transaction, and location. A new row is generated for each combination of day, Execution Plan, transaction, and location.
  If problems occur with the report generation, the suffix _warning is added to the report name, for example: if one of your collectors is not responding, the _warning suffix is added. If you see the _warning suffix, review the contents of the SLAReportTool.log file to see details of the problem.
  
  

  The report file includes the following data:

  Name	Description
  intervalStartTime	Time stamp of the beginning of the range
  intervalEndTime	Time stamp of the end of the range
  executionPlanId	Identification number of the Execution Plan
  locationId	Identification number of the location
  transactionName	Name of the transaction
  performanceViolationCount	Number of latency threshold violations that occurred
  availabilityErrorCount	Number of availability errors that occurred
  accuracyErrorCount	Number of accuracy errors that occurred
  executionErrorCount	Number of execution errors that occurred
  goodCount	Number of completed transactions without any problems
  totalCount	Total number of completed transactions

• Zipped .csv report—in the \reports folder
  This file is generated if you entered Z or B for your output format. The file name is made up of the time stamps of the time range included in the report, separated by an underscore. For example, 1419984000000_1420070400000.
  If problems occur with the report generation, the suffix _warning is added to the report name, for example: if one of your collectors is not responding, the _warning suffix is added. If you see the _warning suffix, review the contents of the SLAReportTool.log file to see details of the problem.

• SLAReportTool.log—in the \log folder
  Log of your SLA Report utility runs. If your report generation encountered problems, you can find more details about them in the log file. Details about new runs of the SLA Report tool are appended to the end of existing file until the log file is full. When the log file is full, a new log file is created. Log file names include a numerical suffix indicating the order of the log files. The system retains a maximum of five log files. Older log files are deleted automatically.
• hierarchy.csv—in the \hierarchy folder
  

  The hierarchy file is a flat representation of the hierarchy of the applications, locations, and Execution Plans defined in your system. Each combination of application, location and Execution Plan is unique. In other words, you can only have a specific Execution Plan, associated with a specific application, defined a single time for each location.

  The hierarchy file includes the following data:

  Name	Description
  ApplicationSyntheticId	Synthetic identification number of the application
  ApplicationName	Name of the application
  LocationId	Identification number of the location
  LocationName	Name of the location
  ExecutionPlanId	Identification number of the Execution Plan
  ExecutionPlanName	Name of the Execution Plan
  Interval	Time between executions, in milliseconds Default value is 300000
  isAllActive	Flag indicating whether the Execution Plan is active
  ApplicationOrigin	Origin of the application APM - automatically discovered by App Visibility TSPS - manually created in the Presentation Server
  ApplicationTspsId	ID of the application on the Presentation Server (not the synthetic application ID)

• mapping.csv---in the \hierarchy folder

  The mapping file is a list of corresponding IDs and names, of the applications, locations, and Execution Plans that are defined in your system.

  The mapping file includes the following data:

  Name	Description
  Type	Type of entity. Possible values are: Application Location Execution Plan
  ID	Identification number of the entity
  Name	Name of the entity

Related topics

Using APIs to generate report data for App Visibility Manager

Retrieving synthetic execution data and metrics

Retrieving the performance data of monitor instances

Changing App Visibility collector settings