What is the difference between "L2+MP" and Method data in the MS GUI?

Answer

There are two ways to pull Method data in the Managing Server GUI:

1. If you set the "L2+MP" option in the Administration / Monitoring On Demand MS GUI, this will write aggregated data into its own tables, not METHOD table. If you use L2+MP in a Schedule, this goes into a different table, and not into the METHOD table. You will not see this aggregated data in the "Top Methods" report under "Performance Analysis."

2. You can also pull Method Data from a "Top Report" under the "Performance Analysis" menu on the MS GUI. When you go to Performance Analysis / Create Application Reports / Top Reports menu in
the MS GUI, you can pull a "Top Methods Used" report as one of the Report options. To generate this Report, the METHOD table needs to have some data first, otherwise your Report will come up blank.

The METHOD table only gets populated with L3 data as described here with instance level of Method data for a Request/transaction.

1. first set MOD level to L3. To do that, you have to do these steps:
- login to your MS console, and go to the Monitoring on Demand menu.
- pick a DC which has good volume and change the MOD level to L3.
- for the same DC, make sure the Samp Rate is high, say 50% or 70%.

2. Next logon to the DC system where you changed the MOD level to L3.
cd $DC_HOME/wasdc/<maint>/runtime/<server>/custom
cp toolkit_custom.properties toolkit_custom.properties.original
vi toolkit_custom.properties
- uncomment this line:
am.camtoolkit.gpe.customxml.L3=/<path-to-method_entry_exit.xml>
- set this line to true:
com.ibm.tivoli.itcam.toolkit.ai.methodentryexittrace=true
save file, restart the DC/server, and put some load on the server

This should begin to allow METHOD records into the METHOD table with the above settings, and populate the METHOD table. Note that this should only be done for a short while, as MOD L3 introduces performance impacts. So run it for few hours, then switch back to L2 (or L1) in your Monitoring on Demand menu.