exploiting web publishing technology to enhance performance reporting

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EXPLOITING WEB PUBLISHING TECHNOLOGY TO ENHANCE PERFORMANCE REPORTING

Claude Aron

Chevron Information Technology Company

San Ramon, CA

frame

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hyperlinks

ASPJavaSc

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tables

tables

formsforms

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AGENDA

• Introduction

• Environment

• Using frame-based pages for report retrieval

• Exception reporting with embedded hyperlinks

• Server health reporting using color-coded table cells

• Server configuration reporting with query capability

• Summary

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AGENDA

• Introduction

• Environment





• Summary

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Introduction

• Web-based reporting is the information delivery standard• Out-of-the box advantages over paper publishing:

– Timeliness - delivery can be virtually instantaneous

– Universal accessibility - no need to predefine recipients

– Dynamic - content can be modified at any time

– Interactive access - users can select subsets of data

– Environmentally friendly - saves trees!

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Introduction

• But, merely converting existing paper reports to web format (e.g. HTML or GIF files) is NOT sufficient: – The increased exposure to increasingly sophisticated internet

content has raised user expectations of usability

– The volume of performance reports in a distributed environment with hundreds of servers requires:

• An efficient user interface for navigating to specific content

• A method for identifying exceptions & thresholds

• A method for drilling down to increasing levels of detail

• A help facility to define & explain reports & metrics

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Introduction

• Assumptions: – You don’t have the luxury of assigning or hiring an experienced

web application developer to design and implement a performance reporting application

– The volume of your data & capabilities of your hardware/software preclude dynamic report generation

– You have a basic understanding of programming principles

– You have some experience with SAS programming

– You have some experience with VBScript programming (optional)

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AGENDA

• Introduction

• Environment





• Summary

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Environment

• 400+ monitored NT servers:

– File (54), Print (46), Domain Control (61), SMS (41), MSExchange (80), Shared Apps (47), RAS (16), Lotus Notes (14), SAP (17), Misc Apps (24)

• 22 HP-UX servers & 14 Sun Servers

• Performance Data Repository is SAS IT Service Vision

• Data collectors are NTSMF (DataCore Software) & Measureware (HP)

• Hardware: HP-UX K430, 4 CPUs, 768 MB memory, 13 GB disk space

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AGENDA

• Introduction

• Environment





• Summary

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Frame-based pages for reports

• The “frame wars” are over

• Frames provide an excellent UI structure for report retrieval– Form with selection criteria in one frame

– Report output in second frame

– User navigational interaction is kept to a minimum

• Sample frameset syntax:

<frameset rows=“15%,85%”>

<frame src=“xxx.html”>

<frame src=“yyy.html” name=“reportwin”>

</frameset>

• Sample form syntax:

<form method=“POST” action=“zzz.asp” target=“reportwin”

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Frame-based pages for reports

• Best practices:

– Establish a strict naming pattern for report files, to minimize complexity of server scripts. Example:

servertype.servername.reporttype.interval.outputtype

– Use the report output frame to display useful information when the page is first displayed, e.g. a high-level summary report or a help page that explains report contents or selection criteria.

– Minimize the screen real estate used by the report selection frame to maximize the viewing area for reports.

– Include a link to the site home page & to a help page in the report selection frame.

– If you have multiple report framesets, include links to them in the report selection frame (use javascript routines to create dropdowns).

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AGENDA

• Introduction

• Environment





• Summary

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Exception reporting / hyperlinks

• Exception Report Design– Large number of servers in a distributed environment

makes exception reporting imperative.

– Try to design exception reports so that all exceptions appear on a single web page.

– Highlight exceptions that exceed thresholds (e.g. by color-coding) so that they stand out clearly.

– Provide hyperlinks to detailed reports that provide additional data on exceptions (length, severity, potential causes, etc.)

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Exception reporting /hyperlinks

• SAS HTML Data Set Formatter– SAS HTML Data Set Formatter converts SAS data into html tables.

– Invoked via %ds2htm macro call.

– Specify input SAS data set, output html file, variables to display in table & optional formatting parameters.

– Example: %ds2htm(htmlfile=abc.exceptions.20001231.html,

data=mysas.exception.data,

var=server1 metric1 server2 metric2 server3 metric3,

clsize=1, vsize=1, caption=Server Exception Report)

– Complete documentation at http://www.sas.com/rnd/web/intrnet/format/index.html

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• Embedding hyperlinks– Build SAS variables formatted into html hyperlink syntax.

– Syntax is <a href=URL>text string</a>.

– Set length of SAS variable to a large value (e.g. 90).

– Concatenate literal strings to variables, e.g.:

cellval=“<a href=&pfx..” || trim(servname) || “.” || trim(date) || “.gif>” || servname || “</a>”;

– If a SAS macro variable needs to be followed by a period, you need to insert an extra period, e.g. %pfx..

– Use the SAS trim function to remove trailing blanks.

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• Highlighting thresholds– Same method as embedding hyperlinks - build SAS variables that

contain html syntax for specifying color properties.

– Syntax for specifying font color is <font color=colorname>

– Test threshold value when building variables:

if thresh=0 then exval = put(val,7.2);

else exval = “<font color=red>” || put(val, 7.2) || “</font>”;

– The SAS put function formats numeric variables as character strings.

– If you don’t assign a <font color>, the default font color for that page is used.

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AGENDA

• Introduction

• Environment





• Summary

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Server health reporting

• Server Health Report Design – Green light, yellow light, red light paradigm:

• Green = Normal range, no action required

• Yellow = Exceeds normal range, but may be acceptable

• Red = Extreme range, should be investigated

– Metrics for availability, processor utilization, available memory, & disk space.

– Analyze your own historical data to determine thresholds & be prepared to tune & adjust if necessary. If you have a lot of red lights, either you’re in serious trouble or your thresholds are not set correctly!

– Metrics are hyperlinks to detailed reports; column headings are

hyperlinks to metric definitions (javascript popups).

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Server health reporting

• Coding techniques– Due to cell-coloring logic & javascript popups, we can’t use the

%ds2htm macro - so we use standard SAS put statements instead.

– Output file is “.asp”, to allow server-side includes.• Include syntax: 

– Select/when statements are used to test metric values, determine what color cells should be, & build variables.

– Syntax for hyperlinking to a javascript function:• <a href=javascript:void(functionname())>text string</a>

– Javascript function definition must be placed above the function call!

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AGENDA

• Introduction

• Environment





• Summary

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Server configuration queries

• Server Configuration Query Design

– Be able to answer questions such as:• What are the hardware/software configurations of a class of servers?

• Are there any servers that haven’t been upgraded to Service Pack n?

• Which servers are configured with over 1 GB of memory?

– Can use flat file or database table.

– Use form input boxes to allow text or numeric input.

– Pre-fill with values that retrieve all servers IF that’s practical.

– Allow case-insensitive input.

– Disregard leading or trailing blanks.

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• Form Processing Coding Hints– Form input statement syntax:Text: input type=text size=n maxlength=n name=“fieldname”

Numeric: input type=number size=n maxlength=n value=nname=“fieldname”

– Processing form input in Active Server Pages / VBScript:• To read values:

x=Request.Form(“fieldname”)• To eliminate trailing/leading blanks & convert to upper case:

x=Trim(Ucase(Request.Form(“fieldname”)))• To test for numeric input:

if not IsNumeric(x) then ...

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• File Processing Coding Hints

– To open a file for processing:

• Set Sobj=Server.Create.Object(“Scripting.FileSystemObject”)

• Set Sfil=sobj.OpenTextFile(ServerMapPath(“your.file”))

– To read data from a file:

• SrvTemp=sfil.ReadLine

• SrvVar=Split(OneRec,”,”,-1,1)

– To test for presence of a character string:

• if Instr(1,SrvVar(0),SrvString,1) > 0 then ...

– To write output records:

• Response.Write “……”

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• File Processing Coding Hints

– To close a file:

• Sfil.Close

– Next two statements free memory & system resources - very important!

• Set Sfil=Nothing

• Set Sobj=Nothing

– To send all the generated output to the browser:

• Response.Flush

• Needed only if Response.Buffer=True was set. Response buffering is recommended in most cases to optimize network transmission.

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AGENDA

• Introduction

• Environment





• Summary

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Summary

• Internet publishing of performance data has some intrinsic advantages.

• With a little thought & effort, it’s possible to design reports & report interfaces that enhance

the user experience.• You don’t need to be a professional web

developer - even performance analysts

can do it!

exploiting web publishing technology to enhance performance reporting

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