About the Performance tool

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 of various approaches or configuration choices.

The DB Trace facility logs all 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.

To view performance data:

1. Select > Performance or > System > Performance, BYRNB 2/17/10 or the equivalent keyboard shortcut CTRL + Q.
2. The Performance panel appears, containing statistics that reflect totals since you logged on.
3. You can interact with the summary tool page to record statistics. See Performance tool — Using the Summary display.

REMOVE? Through a personal preference, you can control whether the Performance tool opens in a new window or in the lower half of the Developer workspace. C-2268

1. Select Preferences from the Designer Studio Profile menu.
2. Access the Tools group of preferences. Select the Performance checkbox to cause the tool to open in a new window. Clear the checkbox to cause the tool to open within the workspace.
3. Click  Save  .

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.

See Performance tool — Full Details Display.

The pxProcessCPU property records CPU time in seconds for the Java process since startup of the node, covering all requestors combined. The pxTotalReqCPU property records total CPU time of this JVM responding to HTTP requests and to service requests. These two statistics are available, by default, on all platforms. DORID 11/07/08

For Windows, more detailed CPU statistics and elapsed time statistics are available by default.

You can disable or reduce the potential overhead of CPU statistics gathering through a prconfig.xml setting:

<env name='initialization/CpuTimerLevel' value = "ZZZZZ" />

where ZZZZZ is one of the following values: GRP-8460 and HFIX-2169 BUSHJ 4/7/10

• FULL — Extensive detail (and highest overhead)
• TOTALSONLY — Only the two summary statistics pxProcessCPU and pxTotalReqCPU are reported.
• NONE — No CPU statistics are gathered, all CPU statistics are reported as zero.

If this setting is not present in your prconfig.xml file, the default behavior for Windows servers is that the FULL setting is used. For UNIX/Linux servers, the default is TOTALSONLY.

Timings are based on JVM software implementations that depend on JVM versions and vendor; this may limit the validity of cross-system comparisons. For example, the IBM JVM does not provide pxProcessCpu. OLSOK 4/22/10 Also, if your system uses Sun Microsystems JVM 1.5, the sun.misc.Perf interface is used. In other JVMs, the System.nanoTime or system.CurrentTimeMillis class may be used. R-20986

The Performance tool supports interactive sessions directly. Services operate as background requestors; you can capture selected Performance statistics in a log file. See Performance tool — Statistics for services.C-2432

C-1261 You can monitor the interactions between Process Commander's server engine and the PegaRULES database or other relational databases, and the operation of the rule cache. Familiarity with SQL is required to interpret the output. To use this facility: B-21286

1. Open the Full details window.
2. Click the DB Trace Options link to set up which database events are monitored. See Setting DB Trace options.
3. Click the Start DB Trace link to turn on the facility and record SQL statements that Process Commander sends to the database software.
4. 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. B-3871VAGUE

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 tool link is not displayed in a production system — a system with the Production Level on the System form set to 5. SR-10014 LAFFJ 4/17/07 In addition, the DB Trace is available only to users who have the PegaRULES:SysAdm4 access role. These access roles provide access to the standard privilege named Code-Pega-.PerformanceTools.

You can start and stop this tool from an activity, by calling the standard activity Code-Pega-Requestor.SetRequestorLevelDBTrace to turn the DB Trace tool on and off.  This activity sets the pxRequestor.pyDBTraceEnabled property; the tool closes the output text file when tracing is turned off. WERDA thru LAFFJ

System-wide database trace

An alternative approach that provides comprehensive tracing of SQL statements sent to the PegaRULES database is the dumpStats parameter in the prconfig.xml file. SR-1226

To enable this feature:

1. Update the <database> node of the prconfig.xml file to add this element:

<entry key="dumpStats" value="true" />

2. Stop and restart the application server.

This setting generates a system-wide database trace file in the ServiceExport directory that can become very large quickly, and can affect system performance. Use this setting only for brief periods, and when a single-requestor DB trace is not suitable.

When two instances of Process Commander are installed on a single Windows server (for example, one for testing and one for production), performance tool CPU statistics may not be available on the copy started second. SR-54