Monitoring Objects and Attributes

Definition

A monitoring object represents a component of the IT environment that is to be monitored, such as the CPU of a server, the dialog system, or background processing. Monitoring attributes are values, statuses, or texts that are reported to this object, such as the CPU utilization, or the average response time in the dialog system. A monitoring attribute can be assigned an alert. The selection of the monitoring objects is performed using the data suppliers that exist for all areas of system management.

Structure

Monitoring objects and their attributes are displayed in the alert monitoring tree as individual nodes in a hierarchical tree. If the data reported to the monitoring architecture exceeds or falls below the defined alert threshold values, an alert is triggered in the corresponding monitoring tree element.

There are five different types of monitoring attributes:

Attribute Type	Description
Performance Attribute	Collects reported performance values and calculates the average
Status Attribute	Reports error message texts and alert status
Heartbeat Attribute	Checks whether components of the SAP system are active; if no values are reported for a monitoring attribute for a long time, it triggers an alert
Log Attribute	Checks log and trace files (these attributes can use an existing log mechanism, such as the SAP system log, or they can be used by an application for the implementation of a separate log)
Text Attribute	Allows a data supplier to report information that is not evaluated for alerts; the text can be updated as required

You can assign methods to monitoring attributes. A method can be a report, a function module, an SAP transaction, or a URL that is to executed as a reaction to an alert. You can execute these methods within the Alert Monitor. If you double click, for example, the MTE for prematurely terminated jobs, the monitoring architecture automatically starts the job management transaction, in which the job reported in the MTE is already selected.