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Monitoring performance of a data processing system

Monitoring performance of a data processing system description/claims

This patent application is a continuation of “Apparatus and Method for Monitoring Performance of a Data Processing System,” U.S. Ser. No. 11/082,925 filed on Mar. 17, 2005, which is incorporated herein by reference.

1. Technical Field

The present invention relates generally to monitoring performance of a data processing system, and in particular to monitoring performance of a data processing system via a result size.

2. Background Art

In analyzing and enhancing performance of a data processing system and the applications executing within the data processing system, it is helpful to know which software modules within a data processing system are using system resources. Effective management and enhancement of data processing systems requires knowing how and when various system resources are being used. Performance tools are used to monitor and examine a data processing system to determine resource consumption as various pieces of software are executing within the data processing system. For example, a performance tool may identify the most frequently executed modules and instructions in a data processing system, or may identify those modules which allocate the largest amount of memory or perform the most I/O requests.

A particular challenge in software troubleshooting is the periodic slowdown caused by accesses to a database. Because of the periodic nature of the problem, it is often difficult to determine the cause of the slowdown. There are prior art tools that provide information to a system analyst concerning a software operation and access to the database. One known software trace tool is a database monitor, which when activated keeps track of database events as they occur. This tool records data such as shown in FIG. 2 and described further below. Another known tool is an applications server log that records information about application threads being served by the applications server. This tool records data such as shown in FIG. 3 and described further below. These prior art tools can help a system analyst troubleshoot the cause of a periodic slowdown, but by themselves have severe limitations in helping the analyst isolate a periodic slowdown.

Therefore, it would be advantageous to have an improved method and apparatus for monitoring data processing systems and the applications executing within the data processing systems as they access databases. Without a way to analyze and improve system performance, the computer industry will continue to suffer from excessive costs due to poor computer system performance.

An apparatus and method are described for monitoring the performance of a computer system via an result size including a result set size of accesses to a database and page size. Preferred embodiments are directed to a performance monitor that correlates data from existing tools that report data concerning access to the database and the use of system resources. Other embodiments are directed to a performance monitor that is included in an application server associated with the database.

The foregoing and other features and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following more particular description of preferred embodiments of the invention, as illustrated in the accompanying drawings.

The preferred embodiments of the present invention will hereinafter be described in conjunction with the appended drawings, where like designations denote like elements, and:

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an apparatus in accordance with the preferred embodiments;

FIG. 2 is a diagram of a data block that represents data returned by a database monitor in accordance with the prior art;

FIG. 3 is a diagram of a data block that represents data returned by an application server log in accordance with the prior art;

FIG. 4 exemplifies a data output table from the performance monitor showing the performance via the result set size according to a preferred embodiment;

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