SOA visibility - reporting on Web Services metrics

Vordel Reporter in action

Whether a company is poised to roll out its initial Web Services or has already deployed an enterprise-wide SOA, without effective governance and monitoring there is a real risk that the rollout will be chaotic and unmanageable. Without the fine grained visibility of feedback reports from the initial and ongoing usage of Web Services, an organization has no way to gauge the success or otherwise of the Web Services and whether the project should proceed further.

Vordel Reporter displays metrics of Web Services usage. Its dashboards and reports are customizable to the needs of engineers, Quality Assurance personnel, and business users.

Business users can see exactly how particular clients are using their Web Services, since the reports are linked to authentication data. The intelligence gathered from monitoring Web Services usage allows technical administration and QA departments ensure that their SOA projects are performing as expected.

Vordel Reporter allows analysts to identify and predict potential usage trends within an organization's SOA. All intelligence data from individual services is collated, analyzed and made available for the formulation of policies.

FAQ

Q. Where does Vordel Reporter get its data?

A. Vordel Reporter gets it data from enterprise XML Gateways and Policy Enforcement Points. XML Gateways gather information at the perimeter and Policy Enforcement Points gather information within in the SOA.

Q. How is Vordel Reporter customizable?

A. The dashboard of reports presented to the user is completely customizable, in terms of the reports themselves and even their layout on the page. In this way, a security admin can have a dashboard of security event reporting, while a QA professional can have a dashboard of service latency.

Q. How is Vordel Reporter different from other Web Services reporting tools?

A. Most other reporting tools use in-process "agents" to gather metrics data. Vordel Reporter's metrics come from actual clients of the Web Services (XML Gateways or Policy Enforcement Points). Agents are not as useful as clients for the purpose of gathering data. e.g. if a Web Service platform is overloaded or down, then the agent will also be affected. Whereas in Vordel's architecture, the client will still be available and able to gather accurate metrics."

Features

Customizable Report dashboard
Vordel Reporter's comprehensive instrumentation capabilities allows the user to visualize a range of relevant metrics based on content of messages flowing through the SOA. Create and add new reports based on business requirements with the library of instruments.

Service Usage analysis
Detailed reports tracking service consumption enables the enterprise to understand usage patterns particular to the different Web Services and ultimately, their associated business processes. Armed with this data, the business analysts and Enterprise Architects are in an informed position on how best to optimize the overall SOA's performance and align it to the commercial requirements.

Performance Response times
The ability to track latencies, response times and other performance metrics on Web Services transactions in real time is a key requirement for a successful SOA. Vordel Reporter tracks all performance relevant metrics and in conjunction with Vordel's other infrastructure products, can issue alerts to IT administrators to ensure optimum performance of the SOA is maintained at all times. The application of early-warning thresholds gives immediate visibility and ultimately enables longer-term service-level objective achievement.

Fine-tuning of service levels and thresholds
In order to fine-tune Quality of Service, system administrators will need to continually optimize the service level and performance thresholds for individual services. Vordel Reporter provides valuable insights to Quality-of-Service (QOS) indicators such as Real-time graphing of response times and Comparison of average response times to Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

Auditing & Logging
Essential to any corporate governance framework is the need for compliance with industry regulations such as Sarbanes Oxley, Basle II, HIPPA etc. Vordel Reporter addresses the mandates for regulatory compliance by delivering audit and non-repudiation controls (for both internal and external communications), and an interface to generate reports on all Web Services-based transaction archives.

Root cause Analysis of data
Coupled with a runtime governance product, such as Vordel Policy Director, reports can be extracted to portray particular service bottlenecks and anomaly detection. This allows the "finger of blame" to be pointed at individual services which are slowing down the system as a whole thus enabling Network Administrators optimize the system performance.

Exception Management Reports
Vordel Reporter generates reports on incidents that fall outside of normal service usage patterns. Whilst the runtime governance functionality of VordelDirector will block potentially damaging incidents, Vordel Reporter provides the "exception detection" functionality to ensure the SOA runs as expected.

Vordel Reporter datasheet