1. List Widget

1.1. Purpose

The main purpose of the List widget is compute a top list of object ordered by their activity on a particular metric.

The widget will record the full history and allow full access of data in the past.

For example, one could use that widget to get the top list of sources with the slowest boot time.

1.2. Metric used to compute the top

• For each object a restricted list of metric is proposed, based on the data collected by the Engine
• For some objects, the number of sources associated to the object can be used
  • For that special metric, the aggregation will be restricted to a daily period
  • If grouping on category

1.3. Creating widget

To create a Service widget, please follow the following steps:

1.3.1. Step 1

Past an investigation in the proposed dialog. The following parts of the investigation will be used to process sources filtering

• Main object of the investigation. It define the object of the top list.
• Conditions on object
• Conditions on aggregates
• Conditions on time (for example between 05:00 and 23:00)

The following investigation cannot be used in that widget

• The template investigations
• Investigations on Event on Activity, or using them in conditions

  
  

1.3.2. Step 2

Define the way that the top list will be established

• Choose the number of entries will be retained in the top list. A maximum number of 100 entries can be retained.
• Choose the metric to be used for ordering the object
• Define the way you want the result to be aggregated, switch the metric it can be one or many of following modes
  • total will compute the summation of result among periods and groups
  • average will compute the means of result among periods and groups
  • min will keep the minimum value
  • max will keep the maximum value
• Choose the ordering direction of the top list
  • Descending will retain the object having biggest values in the list
  • Ascending will retain the object having lowest values
• Select the attributes to be displayed in addition to the object name
  • It can be either field or category of the object
  • A box present the selected attributes and allow to re-order them
  • Note that the attribute which permit to the user to identify the object (usually the name) cannot be removed or moved

  
  

1.3.3. Step 3

optionally select a criterion for grouping results, it can be any category on source object, results are classified by keywords

1.4. How the calculation is performed

1.4.1. Retrieving the statistics from Engine

• The widget will query the engine for the metric value on the computation day.

The investigation will be used to apply conditions on the query.

1.4.2. Computing the value according to grouping for one day

Each metric value gathered from the engine will be aggregated to preceding values using the defined operation (total, average, min or max). The aggregation will be done at overall level and for each grouping entries.

For example if one define a List widget to monitor the slowest boot, let see the impact of grouping on the result. The widget is defined as list the 'descending top 10 of average boot duration' of sources.

• Displaying result globally
  • The computation will aggregate the boot duration of each sources
• Displaying result according to the OS using a category
  • The computation will aggregate the boot duration of each sources in an overall list
  • The computation will also aggregate a list for each OS

1.4.3. Computing the value along the time

The values computed each day for the widget will be aggregated over 4 time periods

• Day
• Week, the starting day of the week being defined by Portal configuration with Monday as a default
• Month
• Quarter, with first quarter beginning at January the 1st

For each of those periods, the operation given by widget configuration will be applied to aggregate the results: For example, the average boot duration of sources for a week will be the sum of each day value from Monday to Sunday

The aggregation on time will be done according to grouping options

A separate list will be available for each period so that it will be possible to get the top sources with greatest average duration on the week, month and quarter as well

Note that when using the number of sources to count object, only the day period is available

1.5. Using widget

1.5.1. Displayed result

The top list is displayed as a table with object names in first column, followed by select attribute and ending with a column for the metric value

If a "group by" category has been defined, a select box in the footer of the widget allows to choose for which group the list have to be displayed. Note that when using the number of sources, the overall list is not available

1.5.2. Displayed time frame

• The widget interface have a select box to choose the period to be displayed (day, week, month or quarter)
  • All displayed information will be consistent with the selected period, with the chart showing the aggregated values for each period end (each Sunday, end of month or end of quarter)
  • The evolution will be computed between the last displayed value and the preceding end of period
• Another select box will permit to choose a specific date. Be aware that the time frame covered by the chart will always end at the last computed date, and so will not vary with date selection