Working with projects and templates

Visualizer lets you save and re-create sets of graphs using projects and templates.

  • Projects provide a checkpoint/restore capability.
  • Templates provide a macro capability for automatically drawing a set of graphs from any set of input data.

Although the objectives of these mechanisms are different, their operations and internal implementations are similar.

Projects

Projects save your working context. The working context includes information about the database and data detail. It also includes graph options, page layouts, and graphs drawn since the session began (or since the last project was cleared).

Project benefits

Once a project has been saved, you can rest ore its settings and graphs during current or future sessions by opening the project. Projects let you share information and protect the integrity of the database. You can let others view and print graphs from the project even if they don't have access to the database. If security isn't an issue, you can let others perform further analyses using the project database.

Templates

Templates store the information necessary to re-create a set of graphs and their layout. Information such as graph types, data selection, and page layout are stored in templates. However, unlike projects, the actual graphs are not.

Canned templates shipped with the product contain a .BVT extension, and are stored in the Visualizer directory. You can select one of the following templates from the BEST1VIS directory.

  • BATCHJ.BVT focuses on batch job performance.
  • DAILY.BVT displays system health graphs for the last day in the database.
  • MONTHLY.BVT displays graphs for the current month in the database for daily, hourly averages, and monthly trends.
  • RSPTIME.BVT focuses on response time problems.

Template benefits

Templates let you use the same set of graphs with different databases, without recreating the graphs and their respective layouts each time. Templates are ideal for automated daily, weekly, or monthly reporting.

This section presents the following information:

 

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