Alois Reitbauer

This time I take an a bit of an unconventional approach towards defining performance management. The idea for this article came through a number of customer engagements, where the same question came up over and over again: “How do we start with Application Performance Management and what should we do?” Over time I developed a simple model which I called the performance management pyramid. The basic idea is to assign performance management activities to several levels. Each level serves a specific need and builds on top of the lower ones. Just like a building it starts with the basement and then moves up further until we reach the roof. However, without a solid basement the best roof is not worth anything. Conversely, you do not start building a house from the roof. In a recent conversation Michael – a member of my team – brought up the idea of combining activities... (more)

A Step-by-Step Guide to dynaTrace AJAX Edition

  The dynaTrace AJAX Edition has been out there as an Alpha for a couple of weeks. It gave you the first impression what was to come. All the feedback we have received (like that from Steve Souders, and all that has come in via the contact form and the online forum) in that time made it possible to improve the tool from its early versions to its first "official" release version. In this article I'll discuss why dynaTrace Labs built the AJAX Edition, which problems it solves and how to use it in an example with Google maps. Why dynaTrace AJAX dition - and why for free? At dynaTrace... (more)

The Proactivity of Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting of performance problems is very often - if not almost always - viewed as a reactive activity. Frankly, I have often seen it done in such a reactive fashion as a firefight; however, effective troubleshooting should build upon a solid diagnostic process. If you handle troubleshooting as if firefighting rather than based on solid diagnosis, this inevitably is a sign you have failed to take the right proactive measures. The goal of troubleshooting is to resolve an immediate performance problem - ideally yesterday. As some might expect this does not start when the probl... (more)

How to Make Developers Write Performance Tests

I had an interesting conversation with our Test Automation team lead Stefan – who Andi interviewed for our “Eating our own Dog Food ” article – on his experiences with the willingness of developers to write performance tests. I asked a provocative question: do developers really want to write them in the first place? First he smiled but then he said that they do. I honestly was a bit surprised because in my own experience as a developer was that I rather wanted to write code instead of tests. He agreed that it was not that easy in the beginning; however, after the first develope... (more)

Is There a Business Case for Application Performance?

We all know that slow performance – and service disruption even more – affects our business services and eventually our revenue. At the same time we say that major parts of companies are not willing to invest in performance. In this post I will discuss why we find ourselves in this paradox and how to escape it. Applications fail and management does not care dynaTrace recently conducted a study on performance management in large and small companies. The quick facts paint a horrible picture. 6o percent of the companies admit that they do not have any performance management processes... (more)