Designing workspaces

When a user navigates to a workspace, one or more queries are processed by the OMEGAMON® XE components in order to display the requested workspace. Those same queries are processed again when the user requests a refresh or periodically in the cases where the workspace is configured to refresh automatically.

When a user navigates to a workspace, one or more queries are processed by the IBM® Z Monitoring components in order to display the requested workspace. Those same queries are processed again when the user requests a refresh or periodically in the cases where the workspace is configured to refresh automatically.

The workspaces and queries provided in the IBM Z OMEGAMON Network Monitor product have been designed with performance in mind. However, your environment and the resources you monitor might require customization of the product-provided workspaces and queries.

The following are tips to improve the performance for users viewing workspaces. See IBM Z OMEGAMON Network Monitor: Tivoli® Enterprise Portal User's Guide to see the default filters provided for each workspace.

The query assigned to a chart or table view requests data from a particular attribute table. It runs when you open or refresh the workspace. The Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server sends the query to the hub Tivoli Enterprise Portal.

The hub Tivoli Enterprise Portal distributes the query to the appropriate monitoring agent or agents and aggregates the resulting rows. The Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server retrieves the results and holds the entire result set in memory. The Tivoli Enterprise Portal retrieves one page of the results to display and holds both the current and previous page in memory.

You can dramatically reduce the amount of data retrieved by doing the following:
  • Reducing the number of rows or attributes retrieved
  • Applying the same query to multiple views in a workspace
  • Adjusting the auto-refresh rate
  • Reducing the number of rows retrieved

    One of the best ways to improve the performance of queries is to reduce the number of rows retrieved. The Query Editor allows you to add filters that reduce the number of rows that are returned. You might want to change the existing filter values of a query or add filters to the query. For example, the Applications workspace contains a table view that displays all applications that have TCP/IP connections. You might be interested in only those applications that have active connections. You could customize the query by adding a filter in the Query Editor for Active Connections greater than 0. See IBM Z OMEGAMON Network Monitor: Tivoli Enterprise Portal User's Guide to see the default filters provided for each workspace.

    Do not confuse custom queries with view filters, which can also be invoked from the TEP properties dialog. View filters have no effect on reducing the CPU and storage consumption by the monitoring agent and actually increase the Tivoli Enterprise Portal client CPU consumption.

    View filters are applied by the client and affect only the current page. If more than one page is returned by the query, only a subset of the data is viewed on each page. Increasing the page size is an option available in Tivoli Enterprise Portal. Increasing the page size typically provides more filtered data on each page, but increases the client’s memory requirements because now the two pages per query stored at the client are larger. It is more efficient to filter in the queries.

  • Reducing the number of attributes retrieved

    Most product-provided queries return all attributes. There might be 50 attributes in an attribute table, yet you might want to view only 25 of them. Creating a custom query to retrieve only those 25 attributes reduces Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server and client processing and memory requirements.

    For example, the IBM Z OMEGAMON Network Monitor applications attribute table contains 54 attributes. If you are creating a workspace that displays information about TCP applications, you are not required to select the 14 UDP attributes of the attribute table.

    Historical workspaces retrieve much more data than real-time workspaces. Accordingly, all of the queries used for predefined historical workspaces request only the most valuable subset of attributes on the source table. The queries used by predefined historical workspaces are good starting places for building better performing workspace views. See the IBM Z OMEGAMON Network Monitor: Tivoli Enterprise Portal User's Guide for more information about modifying or creating queries.

  • Applying the same query to multiple views in a workspace

    Having multiple views in a workspace that retrieve data from different attribute tables is fine. But if you have a graph containing Total Retransmissions and a table containing Transmit Segment Rate (both available from the same attribute table), create one custom query for both views. By creating a single custom query, Tivoli Enterprise Portal will retrieve the data once for both views.

    The objective is to use only one query for each attribute table used in a workspace. When a workspace is displayed, the entire results set for each query is stored on the Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server. The 100 rows (default page size) from each query currently being viewed and the previous page of any pane viewed are stored on the Tivoli Enterprise Portal client.

  • Adjusting the auto-refresh rate

    The operator can choose an automatic refresh rate from every 30 seconds to once per hour. Each time the workspace is refreshed, the data is retrieved from the data spaces that reside on the system where the monitoring agent is running. The happens only for the currently displayed workspace. Retrieving data from the agent consumes CPU so it is important to specify a refresh rate that meets your monitoring needs while avoiding unnecessary performance activities by the monitoring agent.

    When an operator clicks the Time Span button to display historical data, the auto-refresh rate defined for the workspace will continue to be used. The current auto-refresh rate can result in significant CPU consumption by the monitoring agent because the workspace is automatically refreshed (as frequently as once every 30 seconds). Consider changing the default auto-refresh rate to "On Demand" for workspaces that your users frequently use to display historical data.

For the enhanced 3270 user interface, you can edit the product-provided workspaces by copying an existing workspace and updating the attributes and the queries associated with it. See the "Customizing workspaces" topic in the IBM Z Monitoring Suite and Tivoli Management Services on z/OS®: OMEGAMON Enhanced 3270 User Interface Guide to understand how to create workspaces for the enhanced 3270 user interface. You will also need to know COLUMN value for the attribute you want to code. This is found by locating the Object Definition Interchange (ODI) file for this monitoring agent. The KANDATV DD card points to the location of the KN3DOC file in your installation or you can look in the Candle_Home\TEPS directory for the dockn3 file. You need to search first on the name of the attribute group. See the mapping appendix of the IBM Z OMEGAMON Network Monitor: Tivoli Enterprise Portal User’s Guide for the names of attribute groups. The same design principles discussed in this section apply to the design of 3270 workspaces.