[This article is sponsored by Peningo Systems, Inc., a provider of BMC Remedy  Consulting Services on a nationwide basis. For more information on Peningo Systems, please go to the Peningo BMC  Consultants page ]

This white paper discusses how the BMC AppSight Problem Resolution System automates the problem resolution process in Windows / .NET environments, and outlines the most common application problems. We at Peningo Systems recommends this White Paper to any Windows / .NET Applications Developer or QA Engineer whose looking for an automated problem resolution process will allow to build more new functionality, execute more tests, and accelerate the release of applications — all while maintaining or reducing project costs.

About BMC AppSight Problem Resolution System:

The BMC AppSight Application Problem Resolution System optimizes application development by automating the problem resolution process, which traditionally consumes up to 40 percent of the time during development, testing, and maintenance.

BMC AppSight Application Problem Resolution System uses software-only technology that is analogous to a black box flight recorder on an airplane, automatically capturing full problem data — from user actions to source code execution. The system cuts 50 percent of time spent on root cause analysis by:

> Automating the information-gathering step. All relevant data is gathered in a single, automated step.

> Eliminating the need to recreate the environment and

- reproduce the exact problem scenario. Full root cause

- information is captured, regardless of the problem type.

> Accelerating the analysis step. Developers can now

diagnose the actual problem the first time — and not just

reproduce the symptom.

BMC AppSight Application Problem Resolution System captures every problem in testing, and can be activated on demand in the support phase to gather full problem information in the production environment or at remote end-user sites.

Through process automation, BMC AppSight Application Problem Resolution System enables development organizations to build more new functionality, execute more tests, and release applications faster — all while maintaining or reducing project costs.

To view this White Paper please click the following link:

http://peningoblog.com/bmc/downloads/appsight_dotnet.pdf

About Peningo Systems:

Peningo Systems and it founders have been involved in IT Consulting for over 30 years. Peningo Systems provides IT Consultants at the Professional Service level on a nationwide basis supporting many areas including:

• WebSphere Portal
• Tivoli Consultants
• WebSphere Commerce Consulting
• WebSphere Eclipse Development
• WebSphere MQ
• System Security Architecture
• Tivoli Access Manager Consulting
• Tivoli Identity Manager Consulting
• Tivoli Storage Manager Consulting
• DB2 – UDB, 
• SAP Consulting 
• Remedy Consulting
• BMC Consulting
• Peregrine / HP Openview AssetCenter and ServiceCenter
• J2EE based systems architecture and development.
• JDA Software / Manugistics Consulting
• Blaze Advisor Consulting
• Hyperion Consulting

If your organization is seeking to retain a AppSight Resource, please consider Peningo Systems. Click here to view the profile of one of the Peningo
Systems AppSight Consultants.

To see Peningo Systems areas of expertise, please go to the Peningo Technical Areas page or go to the Peningo BMC  Consultants page.

The following are excerpts from the White Paper published by BMC:

Problem Resolution – A Major Time Consumer

In most projects, more than half of the total software project time is spent on testing. This involves a wide variety of tests, including unit testing, functional testing, integration testing, system testing, load testing, and user acceptance testing. During the testing period, just about all of a developer’s time is spent on diagnosing defects reported by the testing teams. At the same time, testers spend the bulk of their time gathering information and documenting defects. These activities make up the problem resolution process.

Developers may also get involved in the resolution of problems detected after the software has been released. While only a small percentage of all problems are escalated to the development team, these problems often require a considerable amount of time to resolve, consequently disrupting project plans.

Overall, development organizations may spend up to 40 percent of their time on problem resolution, a frustrating process that adds no value to the business.

Inefficiencies of the Problem Resolution Process

The problem resolution process consists of two steps: root cause analysis and problem fix. Typically, the vast majority of the time that developers spend in application problem resolution is spent on root cause analysis.

Root cause analysis presents a challenge because the documented symptom does not usually point to the source of the problem. For example, during integration testing, a particular transaction may not execute. Potential causes of the failure are many and varied, and may include a source code bug, an operating system service failure, a network problem, improper configuration, or a combination of these.

In performing root cause analysis, developers and testers (during development) and developers and support teams (during maintenance) typically collaborate in an iterative, cumbersome, three-step process that is often based on trial and error:

> Gather problem information > Recreate the problem scenario in a disparate, controlled

environment > Analyze the recreated problem to determine its root cause

Since these tasks are performed manually, the problem resolution process is inefficient and time consuming.

Figure 1. BMC AppSight Application Problem Resolution System automates application problem resolution in the testing stage.

BMC AppSight Application Problem Resolution System

The BMC AppSight Application Problem Resolution System increases the output of development organizations by up to 40 percent by automating problem resolution processes during the development, testing, and support phases of the software lifecycle. BMC AppSight Application Problem Resolution System captures, communicates, and pinpoints the root cause of Microsoft Windows / .NET and J2EE application problems — from the user level down to the code.

BMC AppSight Application Problem Resolution System is the only solution that addresses all dimensions of the problem resolution process, integrating into all existing development, testing, and support processes, and handling all problem types, in all application tiers, on all major application servers.

Process Automation throughout the Application Lifecycle

BMC AppSight Application Problem Resolution System leverages a unique problem resolution architecture based on patented black box software technology.

The BMC AppSight Black Box software captures application execution — much like a black box flight recorder in an aircraft — and consolidates it into a complete, synchronized, and correlated record, allowing developers to replay, rather than recreate, any reported problems. As a result, you can eliminate up to 50 percent of the cycle time typically consumed by root cause analysis.

During testing, the BMC AppSight Black Boxes run in the background while functional, performance, and user acceptance testing is performed (either manually or automatically). When a problem is detected, the full problem information is automatically saved and attached to a defect report within the defect tracking system. Because the full application execution is captured, there is little need to document the defect and no room for misinterpretation of the events leading up to the error. Your developers can access the recorded information directly from the defect tracking system, open it in the BMC AppSight analysis views, and quickly determine its root cause.

During application maintenance, the BMC AppSight Black Boxes are deployed in the production environment on demand, when problems that require the development team’s attention are reported. Full problem data is communicated to the developers in a highly efficient, secure fashion. Developers investigate the problem using the system’s analysis views and determine root cause without spending time on recreating the production or end-user environment — and without going through unnecessary communication cycles.

Using Black Box Flight Recorder Technologies to Record Problem Data

Installation of the BMC AppSight Black Boxes is easy, and can be performed directly through the system’s console. One black box is required for each Windows machine to be recorded. The black box can also be deployed over the Web to capture problems that occur on a remote end-user desktop.

The BMC AppSight Black Box software operates with an extremely low and easily tuned performance impact, and does not require modifications to the application code or application server. Its settings, called “recording profiles,” may be changed at run-time to control the type and amount of data recorded.

BMC AppSight Black Boxes are either connected to a BMC AppSight Application Problem Resolution System Server, which provides centralized control, or run as stand-alone applications. Recordings are stored in a black box log file and can be automatically attached to a defect report or a trouble ticket for true process integration. The system is integrated with common defect tracking and service desk tools, and includes an open interface for custom integrations.

Getting Down to Root Cause

BMC AppSight Application Problem Resolution System automates the error-prone tasks of gathering information and documenting problems. The system frees developers from the need to recreate the problem environment (such as a test lab or a production environment) or reproduce the problem, and lets them proceed directly to analyzing the root cause. Supported Applications BMC AppSight Black Boxes BMC AppSight Analysis Views

Figure 2. BMC AppSight Application Problem Resolution System automates application problem resolution in the support stage.

The BMC AppSight analysis views enable developers to replay captured data at different levels, much like a DVD, and drill down to determine root cause. The views include three levels of analysis, which reflect the common root cause analysis workflow:

> User level — shows the end-user’s computer screen, keystrokes, and mouse clicks when the problem occurred.

> System level — provides information on system and application configuration, application performance, and a replay of all application events and operations, such as Web page execution, component invocations, database calls, and file access.

> Code level — replays application execution at the code level, displaying a tree of function calls, arguments, exceptions, and stacks. Works for all Microsoft .NET languages, C++, and Visual Basic.

Figure 3. A synchronized view of user-level and system-level activity eliminates the need to reproduce problems in a lab.

Common Problems with Windows / .NET applications

While Microsoft Windows / .NET addresses many of the issues historically associated with building and deploying distributed applications, it presents many new challenges related to deployment and support.

The following are some of the common problems associated with Windows / .NET applications:

Performance Problems

As with any software environment, performance problems are common and often difficult to pinpoint. The possible causes for these problems include:

> Inefficient code (e.g. frequent exceptions, many large  objects, inefficient database calls — using ad hoc queries

rather than compiled stored procedures)

> Memory consumption (e.g. not freeing objects when they are no longer used, allocating too much memory per request, inadequate definition of maximum number of worker and IO threads)

> Improper application settings (e.g. inadequate session-state provider, buffering disabled on a Web forms page)

> Interoperability with legacy Windows code (e.g. assembling a lot of data from COM/COM+ to managed .NET objects)

> Infrastructure problems (e.g. bad network response times that cause degradation in application performance)

Figure 4. Your developers can replay application execution at the code-level for deep root cause analysis.

Functional Problems

The Microsoft .NET Framework has been designed to free the developer from dealing with various programming tasks, such as memory allocations and security. However, just like in any development platform, coding errors are still in abundance.

Some of the most common coding errors are: > Incorrect business logic (e.g. incorrect calculation of interest rate) > Thread deadlock situations > A severe error that leads to an application crash

Configuration Problems

While .NET promises to resolve “DLL-hell” issues, configuration problems are far from gone. The following detail some of the common configuration issues with Windows / .NET applications:

> Insufficient permissions to access a resource

(e.g. no permission to write to an application directory)

> Incompatible components (e.g. incorrect versions of assemblies or COM/COM+ objects)

> Incorrect application settings in Windows / .NET configuration files > Conflicts with other applications (e.g. an anti-virus tool that causes a Web application to restart intermittently)

User Errors

Windows / .NET applications are built to serve end users. As with any software application, users make mistakes. Some of these mistakes are resolved quickly, while some take days to figure out.

Finding the root cause of configuration problems

Finding the root cause of end-user errors

BMC AppSight Application Problem Resolution System and Internal Application Logging

In addition to achieving tremendous efficiency gains by automating the problem resolution process, users can also realize significant cost reductions in development of internal logging mechanisms. These development efforts, which are taken solely for the purpose of problem resolution, may represent 10 to 30 percent of the total cost of the project. BMC AppSight Black Box software technology records production-ready

applications at the code level, using a configurable recording profile, thus eliminating the need to build and maintain internal loggers. Using BMC AppSight Application Problem Resolution System, developers are able to dedicate more time to building new functionality, rather than investing time in developing logging code, which adds no value to end users. If internal logging functions (i.e., .NET Trace class functions) exist, the BMC AppSight Black Box will automatically embed them into the recorded log, thus allowing developers to retain their investment in internal logging.

[This article is sponsored by Peningo Systems, Inc., a provider of BMC Remedy  Consulting Services on a nationwide basis. For more information on Peningo Systems, please go to the Peningo Remedy  Consultants page ]

BMC as recently released a White Paper titled “Scalability and Remedy Action Request System” which discusses how BMC Remedy Action Request System (AR System) can scale within an enterprise environment and how, by combining additional hardware resources with some of the scaling features of BMC Remedy AR System, you can create a truly worldwide enterprise application. We at Peningo Systems recommend this White Paper to any Remedy Consultant that is involved in a Remedy Action Request System implementation.

BMC Remedy AR System has been designed to scale to the limits of its central processing unit (CPU), memory, and disk sub-system configurations. This paper focuses on those features that can help make BMC Remedy AR System scale as application demand, or breadth of applications, increases in an organization. It presents adjustments that can be made from a hardware perspective to help make the system scale, as well as features built into BMC Remedy AR System to allow it to scale with system hardware.

BMC Remedy AR System has been designed to make it easy to adapt and scale to the limitsof hardware resources. With features such as Server Groups, Load Balancing, BMC Remedy Distributed Server Option, and multiple database support, BMC Remedy AR System is able to scale with your worldwide system resources. As a result, it will never be considered the cause of a system degradation. No matter how many resources are given to a particular implementation, if the system is not tuned to allow the software and hardware to best utilize each other’s resources, it will never be able to perform at its highest levels. BMC Remedy AR System will adjust to any hardware configuration and best utilize the resources to which it has been assigned.

To view this White Paper please click the following link:

http://peningoblog.com/bmc/downloads/bmc_remedy_ars_scalability.pdf

If you are an "End Client" looking for IT Consulting Service providers to support your Applications, Peningo Systems provides Consultants with expertise in many areas including:

• WebSphere Portal
• Tivoli Consultants
• WebSphere Commerce
• WebSphere Eclipse Development
• WebSphere MQ
• System Security Architecture
• Tivoli Access Manager
• Tivoli Identity Manager
• Tivoli Storage Manager
• DB2 – UDB, 
• SAP, 
• Remedy
• Peregrine / HP Openview AssetCenter and ServiceCenter
• J2EE based systems architecture and development.

To see Peningo Systems areas of expertise, please go to the Peningo Technical Areas page or go to the Peningo Remedy  Consultants page .

For most organizations today, there is in place some sort of IT Asset Management systems and/or policies. The key to an effective Asset Management implementation is the accuracy of the Asset Data that is inputted into the CMDB (Configuration Management Database).  Many Asset Management systems rely exclusively on Auto-discovery as the method to identify assets. The problem with this is that many assets may not be in the network and will not be included into the CMDB.

The accuracy of an organization’s CMDB is truly become a daunting task.  There are many non-networked assets of value that need to be included into an organization CMDB for Asset Management to be effective. These non-networked assets may include, PDAs, cell phones, Blackberry phones, notebook / laptop computers, scanners, printers, supplies, spare parts, as well as, mobile computing resources that are used by telecommuting employees. Many of these items above fall outside of the auto-discovery reach, thus are not included in the CMDB.

Since non-discoverable and mobile assets can be over 20% of an organization’s total asset population, a regular physical inventory is required to ensure the integrity of the CMDB. This is extremely labor intensive and prone to human error. For an effective Asset Management system to be in place, Auto-discovery tools are not enough. A successful asset management process must include all assets, not just those connected to a network, especially the mobile computing assets.

Barcode scanning provides a reliable method of ensuring database integrity, especially among mobile assets and assets that are not easily discoverable. Today, barcodes are on just about everything manufactured and are used for asset tracking and identification in most businesses. Bar-coding should be used whenever there is a need to accurately identify or track something.  With barcode scanning an organization can receive or verify inventory by scanning the applicable asset barcode and physically entering the location into the barcode scanner. Then inventory, location, and client data can be uploaded to store and synchronize with the CMDB for automatic inventory and asset reconciliation. Communication with the mobile barcode scanners is achieved via wireless local area networks, or by direct connection to the network via Scanner Cradles. The use of barcode scanning integrated into an organization Asset Management Systems will reduce the time required to verify and reconcile inventory.