Numeric Value Extraction

The Numeric Values extraction tool enables you to fine-tune your monitoring by searching for and extracting actual "unknown or changing" numeric values from a given information source, and building graphs with these values.

What you can do with this tool

Problems with an application are not always as simple as a sentence explaining that an "error has occurred." Sometimes, an application reports its health by providing critical numbers, like waiting customer number, queued requests, processing time, etc. Numeric values in any text content in files/databases/commands output/WBEM query output or web pages etc. represent the value of something related to the monitored application: a queue length, a processing time, a utilization percentage, etc. Monitoring Studio Express is able to read these values in an "information source" i.e. the searched content and report them as a graph in BMC Portal. This feature is called “Numeric Value Extraction” as its purpose is to extract numeric values from a text input (the output of a command, a web page, the result of a SQL query, or WBEM query etc.).

All you need to do is indicate how to find the numeric value(s) in the information source: First, look only in lines that match a specified regular expression, and then from those lines, extract the numeric value located in the "x" column, or located after/before a specified string. Monitoring Studio Express runs the search as per the criteria and extracts the numerical values found. Graphs are built with these values and you can set thresholds in order to trigger alerts if/when the numbers breach your specific thresholds.

You can set numeric value extractions on the instances of all the application classes of BMC Performance Manager Express Monitoring Studio: Command Line Analysis, Database Query Analysis, Java MBean Polling (JMX) Polling, LOG File Parsing, SNMP Polling, WMI Query Analysis and Web Request Analysis. You can set alert thresholds for on the numeric value extractions and make your monitoring more proactive and powerful.

How it works (summary)

The basic mechanism is:

The numeric value extraction tool is integrated within each of the monitoring tools/application classes, which enables you to add a numeric value extraction whilst during the creation of an application class instance, or at any time later after creation of the instance. Alert thresholds can be set for all the numeric value extraction instances.

The numeric value extraction runs differently on running sources such as LOG files – where it searches only amongst the new lines appended since the last poll; whereas for flat sources, the entire information source is searched (as per the indications specified: what; where etc).

Parameters

(HB) = "Higher is Better" and (LB) = "Lower is Better". HB and LB parameters will always display the same value since, basically, both represent the same value. The purpose of having two parameters for the same value is to be able to set different alert thresholds depending on the nature of the monitored object.
For instance, an alert can be set to be triggered on the HB parameter when the value dips too low (it breaches the lower threshold of the range) and an alert can be set on the LB parameter to go off when the value rises too high. The setting of alerts is flexible and can be done on either of the two parameters, on both, or on neither; it depends entirely on nature of the monitored object and the user's specific needs.