January 29, 2001

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Performance-Measurement Standards

By Steve Steinke

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ewlett-Packard and Tivoli Systems Inc. were early contributors to what is now the Open Group's Application Response Measurement API, a set of libraries that gives developers systematic methods for building response-time measurements into their applications. Though many important vendors are Open Group members, and even contributors to the ARM API, only a fraction of applications have been developed with this form of embedded instrumentation.

An alternate Open Group API is the Application Instrumentation and Control API, which is supported by BMC Software, Computer Associates, IBM, Tivoli, and other vendors. The ARM API monitors but doesn't offer control capabilities, which limits its usefulness for automated or policy-driven responses to service-level violations. The AIC API also offers support for add-on security options. Computer Associates has created an AIC software developers' kit, which can be downloaded from its Web site.

The Distributed Management Task Force developed the Common Information Model, an object-oriented approach that's intended to map the relationships and dependencies among computers, networks, operating systems, applications, printers, and other devices. The task force has also developed methods for management applications to exchange CIM-based information over HTTP using XML.

Practically every significant vendor, whichever side of the various techno-political divisions it may fall on, belongs to the Distributed Management Task Force and supports these standards. This group includes Avaya, BMC Software, Cisco Systems, Compaq, Computer Associates, Compuware, Dell Computer, HP, IBM, Lucent Technologies, Manage.Com, Microsoft, Nortel Networks, Novell, Sun Microsystems, 3Com, and Tivoli. It's quite likely that the dominant service-level mechanisms of the future will be compliant with the Distributed Management Task Force model.

Java is attractive in management environments because applications don't have to be ported to execute them on different platforms. The Java Management Extensions are a set of class libraries that support the development of management functions in Java applications and Java-based agents.

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