Focal Point
[Sharing] Resource Analyzer - Experiences/Users?

This topic can be found at:
https://forums.informationbuilders.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/7971057331/m/8977081686

April 19, 2017, 10:20 AM
David Briars
[Sharing] Resource Analyzer - Experiences/Users?
Our site has a license for Resource Analyzer; for various reasons we've hadn't yet enabled/configured the product.

Is your site, or sites you've consulted with, using RA successfully/happily, and finding it helpful?

A forum search of 'Resource Analyzer' gives 147 hits, but unfortunately the vast majority of the threads basically state 'If you want to know who is using your system and how, think about gettting WF/RA'. :-)

It looks like the most recent release of the RA manual is 7706. Is that the most recent release available as well?

The RA reports shown in the manual, look like they would be very useful.

Some threads seem to talk about storing the RA data in a FOCUS database. Is that because the ability to store the data in a relational database is new?

Other threads talk about RA overhead. Again, is that an issue with previous versions of RA?

Any experiences/sharing welcome.

Thanks all!




Pilot: WebFOCUS 8.2.06 Test: WebFOCUS 8.1.05M Prod: WebFOCUS 8.1.05M Server: Windows Server 2016/Tomcat Standalone Workstation: Windows 10/IE11+Edge Database: Oracle 12c, Netezza, & MS SQL Server 2019 Output: AHTML/XLSX/HTML/PDF/JSCHART Tools: WFDS, Repository Content, BI Portal Designer & ReportCaster
April 19, 2017, 11:20 AM
BabakNYC
The latest doc for RA is https://webfocusinfocenter.inf...appent/pdfs/i_ra.pdf marked Version 7 Release 7.07. That's Server versioning which translates to WebFOCUS Reporting Server 8.201. The doc is dated November 2016.


WebFOCUS 8206, Unix, Windows
April 19, 2017, 11:57 AM
Hank W.
Well, there is a plethora of possibilities of gathering user data. On a total full setting you basically are running ECHO=ALL as well as the data... Which will get your database filled up faster than you can imagine. Performancewise imagine running with a edalog set on debug with all traces on with the added database i/o...

OK, so now that I have scared you properly, so you just don't go turn it on and go huh? I can tell you that I've had to set up some "paranoid 1984 reporting" which had to be able to report if a user had performed an adhoc query, and what the return was, retention 5 years was it... Thankfully small recordsets, but you can get the RA tweaked to do this kind of things as well. Trend data is way easier, but you need to again think what data you want to keep/follow - answer is not all, and who is going to use it and for what. So, running meaningful reports needs also to be planned.

Using a FOCUS database on disk vs. database table, depends where you have space available. In any case it should be separate from the rest and expandable, so you don't crash on running out of space or disk or bottleneck on the i/o.

If you are running trends, and follow large datasets, run the weekly/daily/monthly data aggregates and then purge the old data - your numbers wont change, and keeping the aggregate rows takes way less space than raw data.

As with most, RA is a good tool, but you need to plan its use really well.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Hank W.,


Cheers,
H.

WebFOCUS 8.1.05M
Oracle 11g - DB2
RedHat
April 19, 2017, 12:33 PM
David Briars
@Babak - Thanks for the reply. We are on 8105M. When I went to that set of docs, and downloaded the manual, the manual was at 7706.

So maybe 81 RS = 7706 RA
82 RS = 7707 RA?

http://infocenter.informationb...om/wf81rel/index.jsp

@Hank - Thank you so much for the share. Yep, being careful about exactly what we decide to log, setting up purges, example of a use case, & need for planning is exactly what I was looking for.




Pilot: WebFOCUS 8.2.06 Test: WebFOCUS 8.1.05M Prod: WebFOCUS 8.1.05M Server: Windows Server 2016/Tomcat Standalone Workstation: Windows 10/IE11+Edge Database: Oracle 12c, Netezza, & MS SQL Server 2019 Output: AHTML/XLSX/HTML/PDF/JSCHART Tools: WFDS, Repository Content, BI Portal Designer & ReportCaster
December 06, 2017, 01:21 PM
David Briars
We are continuing to evaluate Resource Analyzer before enabling.

Question: Is there a RA report that shows the values of the variables at the time the fex was run?

I am looking at the manual can can't seem to find that type of report.

I do see many reports have a drill down to...
quote:
see detailed request information for each procedure as well as the actual request syntax.

Is this basically an 'echo' of the code run, at run time, with the amper variables filled in with actual values?

If so, that would be what I need.




Pilot: WebFOCUS 8.2.06 Test: WebFOCUS 8.1.05M Prod: WebFOCUS 8.1.05M Server: Windows Server 2016/Tomcat Standalone Workstation: Windows 10/IE11+Edge Database: Oracle 12c, Netezza, & MS SQL Server 2019 Output: AHTML/XLSX/HTML/PDF/JSCHART Tools: WFDS, Repository Content, BI Portal Designer & ReportCaster
December 07, 2017, 05:24 AM
Frans
Also keep in mind that something new is coming here soon, I understood there will be a pre defined portal for this kind of analysis.


Test: WF 8.2
Prod: WF 8.2
DB: Progress, REST, IBM UniVerse/UniData, SQLServer, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Greenplum, Athena.
December 08, 2017, 10:41 AM
KenFR
I tried setting it to go to a SQL server db in 8105 and it took so long to load the results each day that it would not finish the previous day before starting the next. By the time I cut back what it was gathering enough to make it work, the data was less valuable. I'm just using Tealeaf now Frowner


8105 Tomcat and AIX reporting server
input: Teradata, SQL, DB2, Essbase, Oracle, text
output:html, excel, PDF,
December 08, 2017, 11:00 AM
Aswin Ravikumar
quote:
Some threads seem to talk about storing the RA data in a FOCUS database. Is that because the ability to store the data in a relational database is new?


Hi David,
The company that i work for now has been using relational database with RA for few years now . We do a nightly archive job which updates the stats into oracle everyday. I believe if you using Relational DB for repository , the RA table will also be stored in the same db.


Thanks,
Aswin Ravikumar

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Aswin Ravikumar,


Webfocus 8.1
Windows x64
Excel
December 08, 2017, 12:25 PM
FP Mod Chuck
Just as an FYI in addtion to Resource Analyzer there is also a new offering called the Enterprise Usage Monitor that uses the edaprint.log(s) as the source to providing a lot of useful information about WebFOCUS usage.


Thank you for using Focal Point!

Chuck Wolff - Focal Point Moderator
WebFOCUS 7x and 8x, Windows, Linux All output Formats