Configuring Transactions

A web site offers one or more services to its users. The various services that users can avail via a web site are referred to as transactions. For each web site that has been configured, eG has the ability to monitor individual transactions that happen via the web site.

To view the transactions that have been currently configured for each web site, click on the icon available in the Admin tab. Then, select the Transactions option from the Service sub-menu in the Infrastructure tile. To add a new transaction, click on the Add New Transaction button. To delete a transaction, click on the Delete icon. To delete multiple transaction, select the check boxes againt the transactions, and click on the Delete Selected icon.

There are two criteria that an administrator can use to define transactions that must be monitored:

• Administrators can configure transactions to reflect the key operations performed by users of the web site. For example, the key transactions of a retail web site include: login, registration, browsing of the product catalog, searching the catalog, adding to shopping cart, deleting items from the cart, payment, etc. By monitoring individual transactions, web site operators can determine patterns of user accesses to individual transactions. Moreover, errors and response time issues with individual transactions can be monitored.

• Transactions can also be configured so as to differentiate between requests to the front-end web server and requests to the backend. For example, considering a web site that uses the iPlanet application server, all requests to the back-end application server can be represented by the pattern */cgi-bin/gx.cgi*. Using this approach, a web site operator can track requests sent to the back-end independent of requests targeted at the front-end web server and detect problems associated with the back-end easily.