Getting Started
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      2. Getting Started

      Glossary

      Glossary

      Term Meaning

      alert

      		 In the generic sense, all alerts are messages sent from the ProTop agent to the portal as defined in etc/alert.cfg. There are four severity levels of alerts, shown in different colors on the portal: information: blue, warning: yellow, alarm: orange, and page: red.

      alert response

      		 Withing the ProTop portal, a means of notifying interested parties, through a variety of services (e.g. SMTP, Slack, Webhook, JIRA) of alert-related events sent by the ProTop agent to the ProTop Portal. e.g. You can create an Alert Response that sends an email to a list of recipients when an alarm (orange) from a specific site, arrives at the portal. See Alert Responses.

      alert.cfg

      		 (etc/alert.cfg) Used to configure ProTop alerts. The file includes detailed format explanations, examples, and a default set of ProTop alert definitions. See Alert Configuration.. You will also see etc/alert.[friendlyName].cfg). This is a version of etc/alert.cfg that has been tailored to your "friendlyName" resource. The default etc/alert.cfg can be altered during future updates of ProTop, the [friendlyName] version is not. See Alert Configuration.

      appmon.cfg

      		 (etc/appmon.cfg) A configuration file for monitoring non-OpenEdge resources. See Application Monitoring.

      appsrv.cfg

      		 (etc/appsrv.cfg) A list of App Servers to be monitored via the ProTop "A" command. See AppServer Monitoring.

      cfg files

      		 (etc/*.cfg) A file naming convention within ProTop that is used to denote configuration files found in "[PROTOPDIR]/etc/". Many of these files can and should be customized to your specific installation. Such files are not overwritten during future updates of ProTop on your system. See Configuration File Hierarchy.

      churn

      		 (aka turns: deprecated) Churn is the ratio of record reads to the number of records in that table. For instance, a table with 100 records being read 1000 times per second would have a churn of 10. This does not necessarily mean that “table scans” are taking place – it could just as easily be a single record being read over and over and over.

      custid.cfg

      		 (etc/custid.cfg) [PROTOPDIR]/etc/custid.cfg contains the unique customer (site) number for this installation of ProTop.

      data collector

      		 Data Collection within ProTop is provided by a series of programs in [PROTOPDIR]/dc. These programs correspond to sections or panels in ProTop Real-Time. The collection (or not) of data by the pt3agents is configured via the ptInitDC variable in [PROTOPDIR]/etc/pt3agent.[*].cfg. See Data Collectors.

      dblist.cfg

      		 (etc/dblist.cfg) Contains a line for each resource a given installation of ProTop is configured to monitor. See etc/dblist.cfg for more detail.

      dbmonitor

      		 The ProTop daemon process, configured at installation to run from cron (UNIX/Linux: dbmonitor.sh) on a scheduled basis or as a Windows Service. If not already running it is started (e.g. after a reboot). In turn it starts pt3agent processes for the resources defined in [PROTOPDIR]/etc/dblist.cfg and executes tasks defined in [PROTOPDIR]/etc/schedule.[*].cfg

      deploy.cfg

      (etc/deploy.cfg) This identifies what sort of deployment this is. The various types are: src - source (you must have a 4gl compiler license available); rx - encrypted source (usable with -rx); rcd-### - r-code for some particular version of OpenEdge.

      Don't mess with this file!

      friendly name

      		 The first column of each line in [PROTOPDIR]/etc/dblist.cfg. The friendlyName is a short, simple, and unique name associated with the explicit name of a resource being monitored by ProTop. To start the ProTop real-time (CHUI) monitor against one of the monitored resources you use "protop [friendlyName]"

      health check

      		 An automated process that reports inconsistencies between your environment as currently configured and industry best practices. It can be initiated manually from within ProTop RT (the H command key) or run on a regular basis. See Scheduler. It runs 30 minutes (typically, but configurable), and will report whatever it finds in that window. If the current value of a metric or parameter crosses a well-established threshold, it will be called out in the report. There is no context outside of that 30-minute window, no interpretation over time, no predictions, no higher-level insights, etc.

      Gap Assessment

      		 A detailed, client-specific analysis of an OpenEdge environment. A senior DBA will analyze trends, identify and report correlations between metrics over time; determine and document secondary and tertiary effects that are currently impossible or impractical to automate; and diagnose issues from patterns discovered in logs and alerts.

      healthcheck.cfg

      		 (etc/healthcheck.cfg) Used in conjunction with the commercial version of ProTop.

      highlight.cfg

      		 (etc/highlight.cfg) Contains rules that govern attributes of displayed data. This encrypted file is not edited directly. See Color Picker.

      log_oedb.cfg

      		 (etc/log_oedb.cfg) Scans OpenEdge database log files for specific errors, and monitors logins and logouts. This monitor only works with OE db log files as it expects the log to be structured accordingly. See Log File Monitor.

      log_text.cfg

      		 (etc/log_text.cfg) The generic text monitor config file. See Log File Monitor.

      log_ubrk.cfg

      		 (etc/log_ubrk.cfg) A specialized version of the generic text monitor. It searches for specific strings or patterns inside ubroker logs (appservers, webspeed). See Log File Monitor.

      logmon.cfg

      		 (etc/logmon.cfg) Specifies which files you want to monitor and with what type of monitor. See Log File Monitor.

      messages.cfg

      		 (etc/messages.cfg) Progress OpenEdge messages that might appear in the database .lg file and how to react to them. If running, dbmonitor will watch the .lg file for these messages and react accordingly. If there is an etc/messages.custid.cfg those messages are appended to and override the base messages. messages.hc.cfg modifies the treatment of certain messages for health check purposes.

      metric

      		 Any one of nearly 1000 measurements gathered by ProTop for the purposes of analysis, trending, monitoring and alerting. See Alertable Metrics.

      motd.cfg

      		 (etc/motd.cfg) The message of the day. These messages are randomly displayed on the splash screen during startup. One message per line. Use ~n to embed a newline.

      ProTop

      		 A tightly integrated set of tools for analyzing, monitoring, trending, and alerting for any Progress OpenEdge environment.

      ProTop Agent

      		 aka pt3agent or agent, a Progress client session started by the dbmonitor. The agent monitors, performs data collection and anaysis of resources defined in [PROTOPDIR]/etc/dblist.cfg. The data is used by ProTop RT and sent to the portal for trending and alerting.

      ProTop Dashboard

      		 aka ProTop Alerts Dashboard. This is the landing page for your view into the ProTop Portal. It shows monitored Resources and their Alerts (blue=info, yellow=warning, orange=alarm, red=page). The dashboard allows you to filter by a variety of Customer(site), Resource and Alert attributes to identify alerts of particular interest.

      ProTop Portal

      		 Any number of web-enabled servers around the world, used for gathering, monitoring, filtering, displaying, analyzing, and responding to the constant flow of Metrics and Alerts generated by the many ProTop customer installations.

      ProTop Real-Time

      		 aka ProTop RT, ProTop CHUI or CHUI ProTop. It is the character user interface run directly on the server running the resources defined in [PROTOPDIR]/etc/dblist.cfg. It provides a broad, deep, and dynamic real-time view into a running Progress system.

      ProTop Trends

      		 ProTop Metric data points are collected over time for the purpose of determining in which direction a resource is changing. This data is presented in graphical form on the ProTop Portal Trends Dashboards.

      ptInitDC

      		 This is a variable in etc/pt3agent.*.cfg that contains a comma separated list of Data Collectors currently being run by the ProTop agent.

      pt3agent.cfg

      		 (etc/pt3agent.cfg) Settings for the pt3 background agent. This configuration file is NOT re-read for changes, the agent must be restarted for changes to take effect. Each friendly name can have an individualized config file. I.e. pt3agent.[friendlyName].cfg. The variable ptInitDC found within is the list of data collectors (the dc/ directory) to be run by pt3agent. This controls what data is available on the web back end. The variable monInt* also found within, is the monitoring sample interval in seconds.

      resource

      		 An entity (database, app server, server etc) within your computing environment configured for monitoring by ProTop. All resources have a parent site id found in etc/custid.cfg.

      schedule.cfg

      		 (etc/schedule.cfg) The ProTop scheduler can be used to instruct the DBMonitor process to execute tasks. Changes made to schedule.*.cfg are picked up automatically. See Scheduler.

      site

      		 (aka customer: deprecated) The unique identifier found in etc/custid.cfg that distinguishes this installation of ProTop from all others. A ProTop site typically has one or more resources defined (in etc/dblist.cfg) which can be monitored by ProTop.