Web Request Analysis

The aim of this HTTP request tool is to monitor your web-based applications - send HTTP requests, post forms, parse the HTML page that is returned, etc. Monitoring Studio enables you to ensure that end-users actually see what they should see on their browser!

To create a new Web Request analysis, right-click the Application/Container icon in the PATROL Console and select KM Commands > New > Web Request analysis…

To edit an existing Web Request analysis, right-click the Web Request analysis icon in the PATROL Console and select KM Commands > Edit.

After the welcome panel of the wizard, the next panel (shown below) asks you to enter the URL to query and the method to be used.

URL to query: Enter the URL of the web site that needs to be monitored. From a Windows agent, it is possible to poll a secure web site by using the "https" method.

HTTP Request type: There are two different modes: "GET" and "POST", select your mode.

The "GET" mode (HTTP GET method) is the standard way to query a Web page from a Web server. The "POST" mode (HTTP POST method) is classically used to post a form to a Web server and obtain the result of the processing of the form data. If you choose this mode you need to specify which variables with what values must be passed to the Web server.

Some Web forms can be passed to the server with the HTTP GET method. In this case, the form data goes through the URL (http://server/form.php?varA=valueA&varB=valueB&…).

You must check the Web form HTML source to know which method needs to be used (GET or POST).

To post a form to a Web server, you need to enter the URL of the script/CGI/page that will actually process the data, which may be different from the Web page URL that shows the form itself. Again, you need to check the Web form HTML source to identify the URL to query.

A Web form HTML source should contain a statement like the following one: <FORM METHOD="POST" ACTION="/urlToQuery.php">

Timeout after: Enter the timeout period. The default is set to 30 seconds. When this timeout is reached, Monitor Studio considers the host to be unreachable and triggers an alert on the ServerConnectionState parameter.

Proxy settings (optional): If your environment uses a proxy server, click to enter the proxy settings required to execute the HTTP request.

Web Server Authentication: (optional) See section below on HTTP authentication for details.

Authenticate as: enter the user name as required by the HTTP server (see note below for more information)

C:\Documents and Settings\veronique\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\archive.pstSelect what you would like to retrieve from the Web page returned by the Web server: the entire HTTP response; only the Web page (with HTML tags) or only the content text (no HTML tags).

Click Next and you arrive at the last step of Monitoring Studio settings for this web request object.

Some Web applications request a user name and password in order to access resources available on the Web server.

Starting with version 8.5.00, Monitoring Studio supports HTTP authentication. The HTTP authentication is a login/password-based mechanism implemented in the HTTP protocol itself.

HTTP authentication has nothing to do with an authentication system of a Web page with a form asking for user credentials like on www.hotmail.com or www.yahoo.com or any public Webmail service.

A Web server that requires an HTTP authentication results in the following dialog box in Internet Explorer:

Please note that this depends on where Monitoring Studio is running, and not on the platform the Web server is running on.

•	When running on a Windows machine, Monitoring Studio supports Basic, Digest and NTLM authentication schemes.

•	When running on UNIX or Linux, Monitoring Studio only supports Basic HTTP authentication (password is sent in a base64-encoded form, i.e. very easily decoded).

If you need to test a Web page or retrieve information from a Web server that requires HTTP Digest or NTLM authentication, we recommend that you install Monitoring Studio on a Windows system and set up the Web requests from this machine (Web requests can be sent to remote systems).

If the "POST" method is selected in the first panel, the following panel comes up:

Here, up to eight variables to post can be entered. For each variable, enter its name in the first box and its value in the second one.

The variable used to specify the path to the VB script used to perform web requests on Windows servers is: /MASAI/SENTRY8/windowsWebRequestScriptPath

Click Next and you arrive at the last step of Monitoring Studio settings for this web request object

Object display name: Label that will be displayed in the PATROL Console for this web request monitoring.

Object internal identifier (ID): PATROL internal identifier of this monitored object.

What thresholds do you want to set for the newly created instance? A drop-down list allows you to select the mode of setting alert thresholds:

•	Use default thresholds: Uses the default thresholds set by Monitoring Studio

•	Set custom thresholds: Allows you to customize the thresholds for all parameters of the instance

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Use default thresholds and customize them: Sets the default Monitoring Studio thresholds on certain parameters (see list of parameters with default thresholds) and then allows you to customize any/all of them. This is mainly intended to help save time if you wish to customize the thresholds of just one of many parameters for the instance, and leave the default settings for the others.

If you select Use default thresholds and customize them; on clicking Finish, the Set Thresholds panel will appear, and certain parameters for the instance may appear with an asterisk symbol - indicating that they already have thresholds. You can then customize (any/all) the thresholds of the parameters as per your specific needs.

•	Do not set any thresholds for now: No thresholds will be set on any parameter of the instance, and as a result no alerts will be triggered. Monitoring Studio will poll the object and return the output of the polling, but will not raise any alerts until you set thresholds.

Thresholds can be set or modified at anytime by right-clicking on the instance > KM commands > Set Thresholds.