I found a recent Blog post by INETCO’s Marc Borbas titled “Just Enough Transaction Monitoring” very interesting and wanted to share it with Bank Innovation members. The original blog post is available at http://www.inetco.com/blog/2011/09/just-enough-transaction-monitoring/

The post was driven by a recent discussion between Borbas and Forrester Research analyst JP Garbani. During the discussion Garbani asked “which of five common transaction monitoring techniques does INETCO Insight use?”

Of course, if you are like me the first question that comes to mind is “What are the five transaction monitoring techniques most commonly used?” Borbas credits: JP Garbani, Forrester Research for this answer: They are:

1. Tag and Trace. Tagging transactions (by adding headers, injecting unique Ids, etc.) and tracing them using agents at each hop.
2. CMDB Mapping. Using an accurate, up-to-date CMDB (oxymoron, I know) to overlay relationships on top of historical log data collected from each tier.
3. Flow Analysis. Mapping “conversations” between components using network traffic samples and statistical techniques.
4. Manual Debug. Turning on debug modes in deep dive profiling tools.
5. Packet re-assembly. Capturing raw packets and reconstructing transactions in real-time. 

By the way, Borbas reports that INETCO Insight uses technique number five, which they feel is the best one when it comes to business transaction management (BTM), especially when you enhance it the way INETCO Insight does.  Borbas goes into detail to explain why INETCO Insight uses Packet re-assembly over the other options.

To read the entire post, visit http://www.inetco.com/blog/2011/09/just-enough-transaction-monitoring/

I hope you found this information of interest.

All the best,

Dan