Tuxedo PIA Server Transactions Test

A Tuxedo application server consists of numerous PeopleSoft server processes, grouped in domains. Each server process within a domain provides unique processing abilities, enabling the application server to respond effectively to a multitude of transaction requests generated throughout the PeopleSoft architecture.

When a PeopleSoft application sends a request to the application server, it sends a service name and a set of parameters, such as MgrGetObject and its parameters. The application server then queues the transaction request to a specific server process that is designed to handle certain services. The server process then establishes a persistent connection to a PeopleSoft database, and this connection acts as a generic SQL pipeline that the server process uses to send and receive SQL to process the transaction request.

If any of the transaction requests handled by a domain fail, administrators should be able to proactively detect the failure and prevent it from occurring, so that workflow is not disrupted and user productivity is not hit. The Tuxedo PIA Server Transactions test helps administrators with this and more! This test periodically checks the status of transactions on a configured application server domain, and reports how many transactions are in which state presently. This can reveal the number of active transactions on the domain, based on which the current load on the domain can be determined. In addition, the test also warns administrators of transactional errors that may cause transactions to abort, thus enabling administrators to take pre-emptive steps in this regard.

Target of the test : A Tuxedo Application Server

Agent deploying the test : An internal agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for every transaction status code returned by the application server.

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameter Description

Test period

How often should the test be executed

Host

The host for which the test is to be configured.

Port

The port number at which the specified Host listens to. By default, this will be 12345.

PSAdmin Home

To collect metrics from a Tuxedo application server, this test runs PeopleSoft Server Administration (PSADMIN) commands on the target server. The first step towards this is to launch the psadmin.exe. To enable the test to run the psadmin.exe, you need to configure the test with the full path to the directory in which the psadmin.exe resides. Therefore, in the PSAdmin Home text box, specify the location of the psadmin.exe. Typically, this will be the install directory of the Tuxedo application server. For instance, on Windows, your specification can be C:\ps\appsrv and on Unix, your specification can be: opt/ps/appsrv. 

Domain

An application server Domain is the collection of server processes, supporting processes, and resource managers that enable connections to the database. A single application server machine can support multiple application server domains running on it. A server process is executable code that receives incoming transaction requests. The server process carries out a request by making calls to a service. Using a managed Tuxedo application server, you can monitor only those server processes and transactions that pertain to a single domain. This is why, the eG agent needs to be explicitly configured with the application server Domain it needs to monitor. 

Detailed Diagnosis

To make diagnosis more efficient and accurate, the eG Enterprise embeds an optional detailed diagnostic capability. With this capability, the eG agents can be configured to run detailed, more elaborate tests as and when specific problems are detected. To enable the detailed diagnosis capability of this test for a particular server, choose the On option. To disable the capability, click on the Off option.

The option to selectively enable/disable the detailed diagnosis capability will be available only if the following conditions are fulfilled:

  • The eG manager license should allow the detailed diagnosis capability
  • Both the normal and abnormal frequencies configured for the detailed diagnosis measures should not be 0.
Measurements made by the test
Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation

Transactions

Indicates the number of transactions that are in this status currently.

Number

If the value of this measure is high for the tmgactive descriptor, it implies that many transactions are currently active on the domain. You may want to observe variations to this load over time, so that, if demand appears to be increasing, you can consider configuring multiple application server domains per database, for redundancy, fail-over, and performance reasons.

On the other hand, if the value of this measure is very high for the tmgaborted or the tmgtobeaborted descriptors, it means that many transactions have been aborted or are about to be aborted. This is a cause for concern, and requires further investigation.

Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know the details of transactions in various states. This way, you can accurately pinpoint the transactions that are about to be aborted.