Finally, IT administration staff has a tool to monitor and support users accessing the System i from network-based applications. With insure/MONITOR, you can identify potential problems earlier and take action to protect critical applications – a very difficult task for all network-based applications.

With insure/MONITOR, end-users with access to ad hoc query tools, Client Access functions or FTP can now be supported with ease. insure/MONITOR allows problem jobs to be quickly identified, the functions those jobs are executing isolated, and corrective action taken. In cases where an end-user calls the help desk, insure/MONITOR can quickly identify the user’s connection and the series of events that led to their problem.

With insure/MONITOR custom views, you may also choose to view only ODBC jobs and their associated details. Important Job Metrics can be viewed graphically as well, to help monitor and pinpoint particular issues.

insure/MONITOR includes these additional modules:

• lock/DETECTOR
• Mutex Wait Detector
• Semaphore Wait Detector
• SQL/OPTIMIZER

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lock/DETECTOR eliminates flipping through multiple green screens to guess at who and which processes are causing the problem. With a simple command, lock/DETECTOR pinpoints locking issues and provides the information needed to take quick action so other contingent business processes are not affected.
 
Informative with a single command, lock/DETECTOR will help you determine:

• What kind of lock is being waited for (object or record lock)
• Which job/user owns the lock being requested
• Who is the actual user associated with the job
• What action to take once the root cause has been identified

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Since mutexes and semaphores are inter-process communication objects, it is easy to conceive a situation where one faulty job can cause other jobs to erroneously enter the SEMW state. Rather than holding up multiple jobs, an administrator can now make a well-informed decision and opt to take action by posting the value being waited on or deleting the damaged semaphore set.

Mutex Wait Detector displays all of the jobs waiting for mutex and the associated mutex information allowing you take action to resolve the conflicts.
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Semaphore Wait Detector displays all of the jobs waiting for semaphores and the associated semaphore information and letting you take action to resolve the conflicts.
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sql/OPTIMIZER provides the tools to efficiently and effectively develop SQL statements by giving access to needed information and integrated tuning capabilities to take full advantage of the iSeries database. Each SQL statement is graphically explained with unique icons and embedded contact sensitive help. The editor also highlights the syntax to help you visually see SQL in the context of other source code. SQL statements can be imported easily with out a collection mechanism from a variety of sources:

• AS/400: Compiled programs, AS/400 source members, Service programs, SQL packages (ODBC), Query Manager queries….
• PC Applications: Windows clipboard, Visual Basic source, ODBC trace logs, Query tools, Text files

Key benefits

• Historical Data Archiving (Auditing)- insure/MONITOR has always provided a fast, real time way to diagnose the root causes of iSeries performance problems. A number of insure/MONITOR and insure/MONITOR for OneWorld customers requested that Leftfield also develop a way for administrators to apply the same diagnostic power to performance data collected over time.
  
  Here’s an example. One of our customers was having difficulties with extensive page faults on certain jobs and was able to track down the job names using native system facilities. However, the jobs turned out to be ODBC jobs (QZDASOINIT) stemming from Oracle’s EnterpriseOne (Oneworld) ERP application and even though the system administrator was able to track the jobs down, he still didn’t know who the users were and what SQL statements were causing excessive page faulting.
  
  The administrator applied insure/MONITOR logging and created a summary view of job and user activity, time of day, and aggregated page faults per job. With this information at his fingertips, he was able to see precisely who and what was causing the excessive page faulting.

• Check Commit Control- Many iSeries operations that run 24x7 with zero downtime use the operating system Save While Active function in order to provide critical back-ups. This is a good solution but can run into problems when transactions remain open for long periods of time.
  
  A worst-case scenario forces the iSeries administrator to repeatedly restart Save While Active when stopped due to a stalled commit cycle. Meanwhile, no back up is possible until the long running transaction is identified and addressed.
  
  In order to help customers pro-actively deal with this problem, Leftfield Technology has created a Check Commit Control feature that detects when a database transaction (commit cycle) exceeds a user-defined amount of time. Whenever a long-running transaction is detected, a message is sent to a queue, and an event is logged in a database file.
  
  Identification of long commit cycles can help isolate application problems and provide early detection and notification when open transactions might prevent critical operations, like backups, from running successfully.

• Comprehensive insure/MONITOR streamlines IT’s ability to support and diagnose functional and performance issues by providing a comprehensive set of system statistics viewable from one screen. Besides traditional information available via green-screen, users can easily see who is assigned to which job, what that user’s last request was (e.g. the last SQL statement submitted by a query tool), and statistics about network communication flows. Much of this information is not available through any system command or other products.

• Personalization administrators can set up their desktop better suite their work process by defining key data views in grid format and graphically. Additionally, users can add their own data descriptions either by changing column headings or even in the data itself so cryptic system information can be easily deciphered.

• Advanced diagnostic functions administrators have the capability to implement a complete process to quickly handle and resolve user issues by having the right set of tools. When issues arise, administrators have one-click access to a searchable joblog or can set up policies to log additional information in the joblog, such as connection info, interfaces used and debug messages. These policies can be set up to trace information by user, by time of day or connection type so you get a complete picture of user activity.

• Multi-mode operation While insure/MONITOR is designed for managing network-based applications, it can also be used for general system activity. With a click of the mouse, users see all system jobs and perform the same level of monitoring and control as they have with networked jobs.