Transaction breakdown feature to facilitate analysis of end user performance of a server system

• US 7,197,559 B2
• Filed: 10/19/2001
• Issued: 03/27/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 05/09/2001
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Micro Focus LLC (Open Text Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Mercury Interactive Corp. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Sarig, Ido, Haddad, Refael, Goldstein, Guy, Fraenkel, Noam
• Primary Examiner(s): Dalencourt; Yves
• Assistant Examiner(s): Alam; Uzma
• Application Number:
  US10/038,098
• Publication Number:
  US 20020198984A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,985 Days
• Field of Search: 709/224, 709/227
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/323 Visualisation of programs or trace data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3414 Workload generation, e.g. scripts, playback
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3419 by assessing time
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3495 for systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/86 Event-based monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/87 Monitoring of transactions
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/875 Monitoring of systems including the internet
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/046 comprising network management agents or mobile agents therefor
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/22 comprising specially adapted graphical user interfaces [GUI]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5009 Determining service level performance parameters or violations of service level contracts, e.g. violations of agreed response time or mean time between failures [MTBF]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/045 for graphical visualisation of monitoring data
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/067 using time frame reporting
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0852 Delays
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/10 Active monitoring, e.g. heartbeat, ping or trace-route
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/106 using time related information in packets, e.g. by adding timestamps
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/14 using software, i.e. software packages network security related monitoring H04L63/1408
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/16 Threshold monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/535 Tracking the activity of the user network monitoring arrangements H04L43/00; recording of computer activity G06F11/34
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 in the application layer [OSI layer 7]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/40 : Network security protocols

Abstract

A system for monitoring the post-deployment performance of a web-based or other transactional server is disclosed. The monitoring system includes an agent component that monitors the performance of the transactional server as seen from one or more geographic locations and reports the performance data to a reports server and/or centralized database. The performance data may include, for example, transaction response times, server response times, network response times and measured segment delays along network paths. Using the reported performance data, the system provides a breakdown of time involved in completion of a transaction into multiple time components, including a network time and a server time. Users view the transaction breakdown data via a series of customizable reports, which assist the user in determining whether the source of the performance problem. Additional features permit the source to be identified with further granularity.

Claims

1. A method for monitoring performance of a transactional server as seen by end-users of the transactional server, the method comprising:

executing a transaction between an agent running on a client computer at a remote end-user location and a transactional server, wherein the transaction includes a sequence of uniform resource locator (URL) requests transmitted from the agent to the transactional server over a network;

measuring time durations between predefined events that occur during execution of the transaction, the measurements being made by the agent;

using the measured time durations to automatically calculate at least a network time representing an amount of time attributable to the network and a server time representing an amount of time attributable to the transactional server; and

displaying a break down of time involved in completion of the transaction into multiple components, including at least said network time and said server time;

wherein the steps of executing, measuring and displaying are performed by one or more computers on a network.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein measuring time durations between predefined events includes measuring a domain name system (DNS) lookup time.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein measuring time durations between predefined events includes measuring a time required to establish an initial connection between the agent and the transactional server.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein measuring time durations between predefined events includes measuring a time duration between the agent receiving a first buffer of data from the transactional server and the agent receiving a last buffer of data from the transactional server.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein measuring time durations between predefined events includes measuring a time spent by the agent processing the transaction on the client.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein displaying a break down of time includes displaying an amount of time spent in resolving a domain name for the transactional server into an internet protocol address for the transactional server.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein displaying a break down of time includes displaying an amount of time spent in establishing an initial connection between the client computer and the transactional server.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein displaying a break down of time includes displaying an amount of time spent by the agent processing a transaction on the client computer.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein displaying a break down of time includes displaying at least one of the following:

a DNS resolution time, a connection time, a client time, a server/network overlap time.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

executing the transaction from each of a plurality of geographically distributed locations; and

displaying a break down of at least network time and server time for the transaction from each of the plurality of locations, whereby an administrative user of the transactional server may compare the network and server times for the transaction as seen by end users in each of the plurality of locations.

27. The method of claim 1, wherein using the measured time durations to calculate the network time and the server time comprises averaging measured time durations from multiple executions of the transaction, such that the network and server times represent averages.

11. A system for monitoring performance of a transactional server as seen from an end user location, the system comprising:

an agent component that communicates with the transactional server over a network to execute a transaction, and measures time periods between predefined events that occur during execution of the transaction; and

a report generation component that generates a transaction breakdown display based on the time periods measured by the agent component, the transaction breakdown display indicating a breakdown of a total transaction response time into multiple components, including at least a network time representing an amount of said total transaction response time that is attributable to the network, and a server time representing an amount of said total transaction response time that is attributable to the transactional server, said network time and server time generated using said time periods measured by the agent component;

wherein the agent component and the report generation component run on one or more computers on a network.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the multiple components further include a client time.

13. The system of claim 11, wherein the multiple components further include a connection time and a DNS resolution time.

14. The system of claim 11, wherein the multiple components further include a server/network overlap time.

15. The system of claim 11, wherein the transaction comprises multiple uniform resource locator requests.

16. The system of claim 11, wherein the agent component measures a time taken to establish an initial connection with the transactional server.

17. The system of claim 11, wherein the agent component measures a time duration between the agent receiving a first buffer of data from the transactional server and the agent receiving a last buffer of data from the transactional server.

18. The system of claim 11, wherein the agent component measures a time spent by the agent processing the transaction on the client.

19. The system of claim 11, further comprising a component that analyzes data collected by the agent component to identify correlations in time between degradations in transaction response times and degradations in the components of such transaction response times, to thereby facilitate identification of causes of end user performance problems.

28. The system of claim 11, wherein the transaction breakdown display indicates average time durations of each of the components.

20. A method for monitoring performance of a server system, the method comprising:

receiving data from a plurality of computers in a plurality of geographic locations indicating time spent by a server in processing transaction requests from each of the plurality of computers;

receiving data from the plurality of computers indicating time spent by a network in processing the transaction requests; and

generating a report page with graphical representations of the time spent by the server and the time spent by the network for each of the plurality of geographic locations to facilitate a determination of whether network and server delays are location dependent;

wherein said time spent by the server and said time spent by the network are measured via agent software executed by said plurality of computers;

wherein said generating is performed by a computer on a network;

wherein the agent software communicates over the network with the server to execute transactions, and measures time durations between predefined events that occur during execution of said transactions;

wherein the time durations measured by the agent software are used to calculate said time spent by the server and said time spent by the network.

21. The method of claim 20, further comprising receiving data from the plurality of computers indicative of, and displaying representations of, at least one of the following:

client time, DNS resolution time, connection time, server/network overlap time.

22. A method of monitoring performance of a transactional server as seen from a remote user location, the method comprising:

executing a transaction between a client computer in the remote user location and the transactional server, wherein the transaction comprises a sequence of URL requests passed from the client computer to the transactional server over a computer network;

on the client computer, measuring time durations between predefined events that occur during execution of the transaction;

using the measured time durations to calculate at least a network time representing an amount of time attributable to the computer network and a server time representing an amount of time attributable to the transactional server; and

generating, at a reports server, a report that includes a break down of time involved in completion of the transaction into multiple components, including at least said network time and said server time.

23. The method of claim 22, wherein the network time represents an amount of said total execution time that is attributable to the computer network, and the server time represents an amount of said total execution time that is attributable to the transactional server.

24. The method of claim 22, wherein the report graphically breaks down the total execution time of the transaction into the multiple components.

25. The method of claim 22, further comprising calculating the network time by summing multiple constituent time durations measured on the client computer.

26. The method of claim 22, wherein the step of measuring the time durations is performed by execution of agent software on the client computer.