Common monitor elements

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This section describes the elements produced by all monitors. Monitor specific elements are described in the individual monitor sections. Produced elements can be viewed in the Internet Service Monitoring Agent dashboard.

If you use IBM® Application Performance Management, the elements that can be viewed on the agent's dashboard as attributes are determined by a mapping file generated by the Internet service monitoring agent. This mapping file isn’t configurable.

Table 1 lists the elements produced by all monitors. Elements indicated by an asterisk (*) are available as workspace attributes. The names of the attributes are shown within brackets. Absence of an asterisk indicates there’s no equivalent workspace attribute. Attributes shown in brackets but without an element indicates that they are only available as workspace attributes, there is no equivalent element.
Table 1. Common monitor elements

Element name

Element description

$consecutiveFailures

If $failureRetests is nonzero and the test fails according to the service level classification, this element is created starting with the value of 1. The value increases until either the test no longer fails, at which point $consecutiveFailures is set to 0, or until the following poll.

If, at this poll, the service level is passed or starts increasing again, the element is no longer created. If the value of this element exceeds the value of $failureRetests, the value of $consecutiveFailures is reset to 1.

Note: The TRANSX monitor doesn’t generate this element.

$datalogPath*

(guid)

The path to the datalog file used by the monitor. The workspace attribute uses the last 100 characters of the path.

$description*

(Description)

Contains the text description provided in the Description field of the monitor profile element.

$failureRetestInterval

The poll interval used during failure retesting. This is only valid if $failureRetests is greater than 0. If the retest interval is greater than the normal poll interval, it’s set equal to the normal poll interval.

Note: The TRANSX monitor doesn’t generate this element.

$failureRetests

The number of service level failures that has to be exceeded before a failed event is recorded and sent to the ObjectServer.

Note: The TRANSX monitor doesn’t generate this element.

$host*

(Host)

The name of the host or server. Stored in the configuration file.

$hostName

Contains the host name of the $host element (if $host is an IP address).

$hostIP

Contains the host IP of the $host (if $host is a DNS name).

$identchecksum*

(Identchecksum )

The identifier of the profile element.

$lastServiceLevel*

(LastServiceLevel)

The service level number of the previous poll. This is cleared if the profile changes.

$lastServiceLevelCounter

The serviceLevelCounter in the previous poll. This is reset if the profile changes.

$monitorDNSdomain

The domain name of the machine running the monitor, as used by DNS.

$monitorHost*

(MonitorLocation)

The name of the host running the monitor.

$monitorNISdomain

The domain name of the host running the monitor, as used by NIS (Network Information Service).

$monitorDomain

Overrides the $monitorDNSdomain and $monitorNISdomain settings.

$message*

(ResultMessage)

A text string describing the result of the poll. For example, Connection failed, OK, or Success.
(Node) The name of the system on which Internet Service Monitoring is running. This attribute is added by the Internet service monitoring agent.

$pollInterval

The poll interval specified in each monitor.

$resultString*

(ResultString)

A text string indicating the service level classification applied to the results of the poll. For example, TotalTime > 20.

$service*

(Service)

The name of the service being monitored. For example, FTP or HTTP.

$serviceLevel*

(ServiceLevel)

The service level number of the poll, as defined in the service level classification:

0 - Unknown

1 - Good

2 - Marginal

3 - Failed

$serviceLevelCounter

The number of times that the service level number has remained unchanged.
(ServiceLevelString) The string associated with the returned service level (Unknown, Good, Marginal, or Failed).

$startTimePoll

The time when the poll started.

$time

The UNIX time, in seconds, when the poll occurred.

$timeStamp*

(Timestamp)

The date and time when the test was performed. The timestamp format uses local settings.

$transxName

The name of the transaction. This is produced by a monitor if the monitor is used in a transaction.

Profile Details

$profile*

(IsmProfile)

The name of the user profile.

Timings - for information about how timings are measured, see Time Calculations.

$timeout

The number of seconds in which the server must respond. Taken from the configuration file.

$totalTime*

(TotalTime)

The total time taken to run an operation in seconds. This includes all lookup, connect, and download times where applicable, and interim processing time.

Time Calculations

Monitors attempt to divide the time taken to complete a poll into different timed stages. For example, this could include the time taken to obtain a host's IP address, or the time taken to successfully connect to a host.

HTTP Timing calculation example

The $totalTime is always slightly longer than the sum of the other times, because it includes the overhead incurred by the monitor's activities such as processing received data and performing system calls. $totalTime is measured in seconds.