Help: Performance tool — Using the summary display

Using this data, you can assess possible sources of improved performance (faster response time or higher throughput) through software changes, hardware changes, or rule changes.

As Process Commander operates, it collects statistics about the demands made on processing resources, and the server system's response. The Performance tool summarizes and formats these statistics and presents them as HTML pages.

Performance data shows the processing demand statistics of your work since you connected, and may help you assess the performance impact between different approaches or configuration choices.

The DB Trace facility records SQL interactions between your Process Commander session and the PegaRULES database.

Performance statistics can help you distinguish between performance issues that arise in the Process Commander server, the PegaRULES database, or external systems called by the workflow. In all cases, the statistics can help you determine how to improve performance.

Use these links at the top of the summary display:

Link	Effect
Add Reading	A new row of summary performance data appears. Statistics include input/output, elapsed time in seconds for certain processing, cache performance, locking, and server CPU demand, for the most recent interaction. Optionally, first click elsewhere in the portal window and perform one or several interactions that cause the performance you want to measure. The system retains extensive data for each interaction.
Add Reading with Clipboard Size	A new row of summary performance data appears, including the size of the clipboard in bytes. Similar to Add Reading, but may add potentially costly processing. (Using the System Management Application (SMA), you can learn the size of each page. Start the SMA using Tools > System Management Application, select a node, then click the Requestor Management menu item.)
Reset Data	Initializes all counts and totals to zero.
Save data	Lets you save more than 100 statistics and values from each row into a Comma-Separated-Values file (CSV file type) for analysis with Microsoft Excel or other facilities. Column headings correspond to properties in the Code-Pega-PAL class, as presented on the Full Details display. (The value NaN indicates that a statistic was not available.)
Start DB Trace	Starts the DB Trace tool to trace PegaRULES database operations. See DB Trace Results.
DB Trace Options	See Setting DB Trace Options.
Start Profiler	Starts the Profiler too to provide detailed CPU statistics for activity steps. See About the Profiler. The link changes to Stop Profiler.
Show Graph	Presents a bar chart highlighting major factors affecting performance. See Interpreting the Performance Summary chart.
My Alerts	Provides additional detail on alerts from your own requestor session (or other filter criteria you provide). See Working with the My Alerts display.
Help	Displays this help topic.
PDN	Queries the Pega Developer Network for the most recent articles regarding this tool. WWW access is required.

For each summary row, many more statistics are available on the full detail page. To see full details, click the Full or Init link on a row.

The basic statistics display has three or four rows. On the initial display, statistics in the row labeled Full match those in the bottom row.

As you interact with Process Commander, the statistics change to reflect the results of each interaction.

Columns of the display identify these counts and timings. The table below describes returned data. All CPU time is in milliseconds. The properties are stored in the PALPhase clipboard page, and are in the Code-Pega-PAL class.

The number of decimal places in timing results depends on the hardware and software in use. In general, the decimal values shown are significant. Measurement values are since log-in, or since the last Reset, or incremental between rows, depending on the row label.

  Accessing the full details display

Click the INIT, FULL, or DELTA links to access the Full Details display for that row. This display provides additional statistics from the same snapshot.

For a description of the contents of that window, see Performance tool — Full Details Display.

You can monitor the interactions between Process Commander's server engine and the PegaRULES database or other relational databases. Familiarity with SQL is required to interpret the output.

To use this facility:

1. Click DB Trace Options to set up which database events are monitored. See Setting DB Trace options.
2. Click the Start DB Trace link to turn on the facility and record SQL statements that Process Commander sends to the database software.
3. Click Stop DB Trace to end data collection and access the trace results as a text file or with Microsoft Excel. See Interpreting DB Trace Results.

Unlike the resource statistics feature, the DB Trace feature is normally off. Use the DB Trace feature only for a brief interval. When enabled, DB Trace processing can produce voluminous output and may adversely affect session performance.

The DB Trace facility is available only on non-production systems, for users who have the PegaRULES:SysAdm4 access role. This access role provides access to the standard privilege named Code-Pega-.PerformanceTools.

An alternative approach that provides comprehensive tracing of SQL statements sent to the PegaRULES database is the dumpStats parameter in the prconfig.xml file.

CPU statistics are not available for UNIX platforms.

When two instances of Process Commander are installed on a single Windows server (for example, one for testing and one for production), only one copy of the pr3native.dll library can be loaded. The second copy is not loaded; some Performance tool statistics may not be available on the installation that is started second.