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Oracle® Application Server Forms Services Deployment Guide 10g Release 2 (10.1.2) B14032-02 |
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# 9 Configuring End User Monitoring

This chapter contains the following sections:

- Section 9.1, "About End User Monitoring"

- Section 9.2, "Configuring End User Monitoring"

- Section 9.3, "Enabling End User Monitoring"

## 9.1 About End User Monitoring

End User Monitoring is a utility that is part of Oracle Enterprise Manager. It allows developers and administrators to monitor the performance of their applications. Since there is minimal overhead in terms of system resources when reporting live data, a system administrator is able to accurately monitor the performance of live applications without needing to take any special additional steps.

End User Monitoring includes reports and performance charts, along with system generated alerts. Unlike existing monitoring mechanisms within Forms, End User Monitoring records the delay experienced by the user from their computer, and not just the processing time inside the Oracle Forms Runtime Process.

The data that is reported from End User Monitoring is qualitative. It can be used for trend analysis, reports comparing different domains or user groups. For example, if opening a particular form is normally reported as taking 2 seconds, and this suddenly drops to 10 seconds, then it is reasonable to expect a corresponding degradation as experienced by users. It does not mean that a user sitting with a stopwatch would record exactly 10 seconds for the operation. Similarly, if a particular query normally reports a database time of 3 seconds, and that query time suddenly jumps to 30 seconds, then a similar performance degradation will be experienced by users.

It's also important to realize that End User Monitoring is not a debugging tool. Analyzing the data will help identify what areas to investigate further, but it will not in itself identify the cause.

## 9.2 Configuring End User Monitoring

You'll need to read and work through these sections to configure Oracle Forms Services and End User Monitoring:

- Section 9.2.1, "Requirements for Using End User Monitoring"

- Section 9.2.2, "Configuring Web Cache to Use End User Monitoring"

- Section 9.2.3, "Specifying a Web Cache Instance to Monitor with Enterprise Manager Grid Control"

- Section 9.2.4, "Modifying the Default Minimum Hits Threshold"

- Section 9.2.5, "Modifying the Exclusion of All Unreasonable Response Times"

- Section 9.3.1, "Modifying formsweb.cfg"

### 9.2.1 Requirements for Using End User Monitoring

In order to use End User Monitoring with Oracle Forms Services, you'll need to install and configure:

- Oracle Application Server 10.1.2 that includes Oracle Forms Services

- Access to, or an installation of Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control

  You'll need to know the computer name, configured port, and password to an Enterprise Manager Grid Control instance

- Oracle Management Agent, part of Enterprise Manager Grid Control

  The Oracle Management Agent is a process that is deployed on each monitored host. The Oracle Management Agent is responsible for monitoring all targets on the host, for communicating that information to the middle-tier Management Service, and for managing and maintaining the host and its targets.

  You install the Oracle Management Agent on the Oracle Application Server middle-tier. During installation, you'll need to specify the computer that runs Enterprise Manager Grid Control along with its configured port number and password.

### 9.2.2 Configuring Web Cache to Use End User Monitoring

Web Cache is the intermediary between Oracle Application Server (which contains the Forms Runtime Process) and Oracle Management Agent. In these steps, you configure a specific Web Cache instance to use End User Monitoring.

To configure Web Cache to use End User Monitoring:

1. Open the Web Cache Admin page for Oracle Application Server (port 9400 by default).

2. Click Web Cache Admin and login as the Web Cache administrator.

3. Under Logging and Diagnostics, click End-User Performance Monitoring.

4. From the Cache-Specific End-User Performance Monitoring table, select the radio button next to the target Web Cache and click Enable.

5. From the Site-Specific End-User Performance Monitoring table, select the radio button next to the middle-tier that contains the Oracle Monitoring Agent, and click Enable.

6. Click Access Logs under Logging and Diagnostics.

7. Change `access_log` format style to End-User Performance Monitoring Format.

8. Click Apply Changes and restart Web Cache

9. Access the target Oracle Application Server in a Web browser, then open the browser's view of the source for the Web page.

   If you can see `<SCRIPT SRC="/oracle_smp_EndUserMonitoring/oracle_smp_EndUserMonitoring.js"></SCRIPT>` at the end of the HTML page, End User Management is successfully enabled.

In the next sections, you select this Web Cache instance to be monitored from Enterprise Manager Grid Control, then configure Forms Services to monitor applications.

### 9.2.3 Specifying a Web Cache Instance to Monitor with Enterprise Manager Grid Control

In this part of the configuration, you specify the Web Cache instance Enterprise Manager Grid Control is to monitor. This Web Cache instance must have End User Monitoring enabled.

To add a Web Cache Instance to monitor with Enterprise Manager Grid Control:

1. Open `https://em.computer.company.com/em.`

2. Log in with the user name and password.

3. Select Targets |Web Application |Add.

4. Enter the name and Forms URL for the home page URL, for example `http://computer.company.com/forms/frmservlet`, and click Next.

5. Select Forms from Available Targets and select the instance name, then click Next.

6. Select the agent port (e.g. 1831) and click Next Finish and then . It may take a few minutes for the status to appear.

7. Once the status appears, go to Page Performance and click Configure Web Application Web Caches.

8. In Configure Web Application Web Caches, click Add or Remove Web Application Components.

9. Choose Web Cache from Available Targets and select a Web Cache target and click Next, then click Apply.

10. Select Collecting and set the interval to 1 minute.

11. Click Apply.

### 9.2.4 Modifying the Default Minimum Hits Threshold

Changing the Default Minimum Hits Threshold setting can significantly speed up data refreshing based on a specified number of minimum hits. A lower number means that data refreshes more often when a specified number of hits has been reached. A higher number means that data will refresh when a specified higher number of hits has been reached.

To change the default minimum hits threshold:

- Run the SQL scripts against the Enterprise Manager database:

      update mgmt_parameters set parameter_value = 1 where parameter_name = 'mgmt_rt_min_hits';
      commit;

### 9.2.5 Modifying the Exclusion of All Unreasonable Response Times

The default unreasonable threshold is set to 60,000 milliseconds, which may be too small for Oracle Forms Applications. You may want to change this default to 1 minute.

To change the exclusion of unreasonable response times:

- Run the SQL Scripts against the Enterprise Manager database:

      update mgmt_parameters set parameter_value = 3600000 where parameter_name = 'mgmt_rt_max_elapsed_time';
      commit;

## 9.3 Enabling End User Monitoring

After configuring End User Monitoring, you can enable it to monitor applications by creating a new section in formsweb.cfg.

### 9.3.1 Modifying formsweb.cfg

You should create a new section in formsweb.cfg to monitor specific applications. For more information on creating specific sections in formsweb.cfg, see Section 4.3.2, "Managing Configuration Sections".

1. Open `ORACLE_HOME/forms/server/formsweb.cfg`.

2. Set `EndUserMonitoringEnabled=true`

3. Set `EndUserMonitoringURL=http://computername:7777/oracle_smp_EndUserMonitoring/oracle_smp_EndUserMonitoring_sdk.gif`

   Note: The computer name is the middle tier installation where Web Cache is running.

## 9.4 Additional Sources of Information

You can obtain additional information about End User Monitoring and information about interpreting metrics from these sources:

- Enterprise Manager Online Help from any metrics page

- Oracle Enterprise Manager Concepts available on the Oracle Application Server Documentation CD.