A business approach toOracle E-Business Suite

response time, E-to-E and SLAs

Gary Piper

Oracle Irish User Group

Dublin

24 February 2005

Agenda…

• What is End-to-End?• Differentiate between a technical and business

transactions• What is response time?• What is, and what’s in an SLA• Simple SLA measurements• Identifying the cause and effect of a performance issue

“End to End” a misunderstood concept…

• Means different things to different people and roles• The real issue is defining a transaction• Vendors will sell an “End to End” solution based on their

chosen interpretation of a “transaction”• Vendors often conveniently define what “End to End”

means based on their ability to provide a technical solution

• Most solutions are technology based– All claim to be non intrusive– Appliance Vs Sniffer technology– Head and tail markers– Agents

What is “End to End”?…

• Every one has a strong opinion • There are two fundamental questions

– What does “End to End” mean?– What is a transaction?

• The meaning of “End to End” is dependent on both role and skills bias

– Technical (i.e. DBA)– Business User (i.e. Application user)– Business management (i.e. GM and above)

• One size does not fit all• It’s all about what is collected, measured and reported on• Reaching an agreement with the business is paramount

End to End monitoring…

• Generally based on collecting varying degrees of information using various methods, storing it and reporting on it

• One product tracks and stores every user transaction– Imagine the size of the repository

– Maintaining the repository

• Often confused with diagnosing performance issues• Collect what is relevant and reportable• Collect and maintain what is historically usable• Value of historical information - 1 day, month, year

What is a transaction?...

• Unbelievable Statement:– “IT should define what a transaction is as the business has

no idea”

• Translation:– We have a tool that can collect SQL code

• As with “End to End”, the definition of a transaction is both skill and bias based

– Technical (i.e. DBA)

– Business User (i.e. Application user)

– Business management (i.e. GM and above)

Transactions…

• In order to understand transactions you must first understand how the application is accessed– Full Service

– Self service

– Concurrent Requests

– 3rd party accesses ( Developer, SQL*PLUS, ADI etc…)

• No single measure adequately covers all access types– Full service has variable port numbers and the information

path changes once a full service session is established

– Self service activity is a stateless activity with shared resources

Transactions…

• Transaction types– Concurrent Requests – Database and server activity

– Full Service – Internal user response time

– Self Service - Internal and Customer response

– Other – ( SQL*Plus, Toad, ADI, Discover….)

• All transaction methods are required for the full story• For Full and Self service activity help the business define

a consistent and measurable transaction• You can then refer to “the transaction” and every one

knows what you mean

Technical Vs Business Transaction…

• Transactions can be divided into three categories– Technical

– Synthetic

– Business

• The problem with most transactions is that they are variable

• In all cases CONSISTENCYCONSISTENCY is the key– Was that a 1 or 1,000 line PO?

– Did the user submit an unbounded report?

Reporting - Know your audience…

Mx

User

Technical

Interest in IT

Hygiene factor

Career Focus

Part of my jobMonth End

Purchase Order

Recurring Journal

Bill of Materials

AP / AR

Cheque Run

Chart of Accounts

Vendor Address

Posting

Latency

Router

IP Address

Milliseconds

Buffer Gets

Interface Table

Mid Tier

IT Speak User Speak

Transaction types…

• A set of transactions consists of all of the following types– One Second - Technical

– One Minute - Synthetic

– One Week – Business

• Detailed collections should be turned on as required for– Performance issue resolution

– Performance tuning – Code

– Adhoc reporting

Transaction – Technical…

SELECT id_flex_code, id_flex_num, application_column_name, segment_name, segment_num, decode(application_column_index_flag,

'Y', 'Indexed', 'N', 'No Index', application_column_index_flag)

FROM fnd_id_flex_segments WHERE application_id = :B1 and id_flex_num = :B2 and enabled_flag = :B3 ORDER by id_flex_num, segment_num;

Time Line1 Second1 Minute1 Week

With the exception of Discoverer, ADI, etc: E-Business Suite is a packaged application Low % performance issues associated with Code Code tuning usually fixes symptom not cause Often User behavior – Unbounded reports

Bind Type Value

B1 Number 101

B2 Number 101

B3 Varchar(2) Y

“Transaction” is taking longer than 3 seconds

Transaction – Synthetic…

Time Line1 Second1 Minute1 Week

Synthetic transactions

Transaction – Business…

Time Line1 Second1 Minute1 Week

Business Activity:User “A” approves all orders over €X and all expense claims over €X (approval bottleneck) - Notification response delays

Deferred Processes:Items “B” & “E” are deferred based on a “guessed” resource usage where as its actual usage is very small

B E

Approval

7 days

“End to End” perspective…

SELECT id_flex_code, id_flex_num, application_column_name, segment_name, segment_num, decode(application_column_index_flag,

'Y', 'Indexed', 'N', 'No Index', application_column_index_flag)

FROM fnd_id_flex_segments WHERE application_id = :B1 and id_flex_num = :B2 and enabled_flag = :B3 ORDER by id_flex_num, segment_num;

1 Week

1 Minute

1 Second

Business Process

End User – SLA / Diagnostic

Technical - Resolution

Simple Transactions…

• CONSISTENCYCONSISTENCY• FNDOAMCOL – OAM is good for something• User Access

– Full Service (Synthetic transaction)

– Self Service (Synthetic transaction)

• Workflow– Business process

– Time from PO receipt to dispatch

• The benefits are in the collection of known and targeted information

Response time…

• Response time now becomes a simple measure• The time it takes for the defined “transactions” to run• When we mention the “the transaction” is slow, we all

know what “the transaction” is

What is in an SLA…

• Often SLAs are confused with performance objectives• Definition of a priority 1, 2 and 3 issue• Issue resolution procedure• Who will be notified and how• Who will respond and in what time• Contingency plans and timings• Business support structure and procedures• 10% associated with application performance

– “the transactions”

SLAs are about managing expectationsSLAs are about managing expectations

SLA response times…

• Don’t pick SLA values because they sounds palatable, you will spend all your time explaining why the value was missed

• SLA response times values based on Standard deviation ranges

– 95% Below X seconds, 99% below X seconds

– Easy to obtain• Be realistic you should only have to negotiate this value once• Synthetic transactions do not include think time etc.. so make this

clear when documenting your SLA value• Define a base line:

– Number of requests per day

– Number of users

– Self Service page requests

Span of control…

HardwareDatabase

HardwareDatabase

InternalInternal ExternalExternal

“SLA” “Usage”

So your transactions and SLA are in place…

Cause and effect…

• Don’t get blamed for something you cannot control• Measuring Self Service response from multiple locations

– If one site is slow may be a network segment or localised web server

– If all are slow most likely database or central network*

Diagnose – Technical vs Business…

Performance IssueIdentified

Performance IssueIdentified

BusinessActivity

BusinessActivity

TechnicalIssue

TechnicalIssue

CodeCode

Not all problems are caused by technical issuesNot all problems are caused by technical issues

Diagnose – Technical vs Business…

Inappropriate User Behavior…

Point in time…

• Allows you to see the user activity that was occurring at the time of the issue

• Know who to blame • Show the affect of their actions• Know which self service customers may have been

affected and call them (customer service)

Start time End time

Point in Time

•Requests•Full Service•Self Service

Questions…

Questions Questions oror

Visit us at the Quest standVisit us at the Quest stand

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A Business Approach toOracle E-Business SuiteResponse Time, E-to-E

and SLA’s

Gary Piper

Irish UKOUG 2005 Dublin

24 February 2005