ARM interface structure

The ARM programming model has a fundamentally hierarchical structure.

Transaction instances are derived from transaction definitions that are defined when registering transactions. Application instances are derived from application definitions that are defined when registering applications. When starting a transaction, a transaction definition that should be used within an application instance is specified, enabling the full set of information to be defined for each transaction instance. For example, all transactions have application and group names.

The application environment record describes a unique combination of application information including the application name, application group name, and properties (both identity and context). Each application environment record is assigned a unique identifier so that it can be referred to symbolically. This identifier is called the application environment identifier, and it is included within the transaction instance record.

The transaction environment record describes a unique combination of transaction information, including the transaction name and properties. Each transaction environment record is assigned a unique identifier so it can be referred to symbolically. This identifier is called the transaction environment identifier, and it is included with the transaction instance record.

Application environment identifiers and transaction environment identifiers are long lived, but they are not persistent in nature. Each time the system boots, the identifiers are regenerated. Advanced Accounting circumvents this problem by recording the application and transaction environment in each file so report and analysis commands should use the entry in the current file to determine the unique combination of values that should be applied to a transaction.

The transaction instance record is used to describe each individual transaction. It includes the application environment identifier and the transaction environment identifier defined above. These identifiers should be used to look up the corresponding application environment record and the transaction environment records so that the application names, application group names, and transaction names can be associated with the transaction instance. The intent is to minimize the amount of data that needs to be recorded with each transaction instancesince a lot of it is static in nature.

Advanced Accounting also supports the aggregation of ARM accounting data. For more information about data aggregation, see Data aggregation.