		VAX/VMS Standardized Response Measuring System


John Lloyd
MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates Ltd
3751 Shell Road
Richmond, B.C., V6X 2Z9
CANADA
(604) 278-3411

December 19, 1985


DESCRIPTION

This set of DCL procedures, Datatrieve domains and commands, and a Fortran
program comprises a "response time" measuring and graphing system.

The command file MEASURE.COM should be run every hour in a priority 4 batch
queue.  It makes some measurements on disk usage or some such thing, and
writes a record to a file giving the date and time and how long it took to
do the measurements.  The file name is coded by the year and month in SI
form (ie YYMMDD.nodename).

The DCL command procedure PLOT_MEASURE.COM summarizes an input file for a
month into a number of plots showing average and worst case elapsed times by
hour of the day, and a normalized plot showing the "stretch factor" of the
average and 80th percentile elapsed times, again by hour of day.

The DCL command procedure MEASURE_MAX.COM plots the weekly averages (I
know the name is lousy) for whatever raw data you put in (eg 85*.MARS).  The 
similarly named MEASURE_MAXHH.COM plots the same for the restricted hours of 
0800 to 1800 each day (note weekends and stat holidays are always INCLUDED.)
These procedures produce MEASURE_MAX.OUT and MEASURE_MAXHH.OUT.  These plots 
are useful to determine the trend of response time (any negative slope plots 
ought to be re-examined!)

To use this, you need: Datatrieve V3.1 or later, a VT240 or VT125 terminal,
a Fortran compiler if you want to rebuild the analysis program, and a little 
bit of knowledge of DTR operations.

First, create a DTR dictionary, and place

	MEASTAT.DTR
	MEASTAT_REC.DTR
	MEASURE.DTR
	MEASURE_REC.DTR

in it.  Point CDD$TOP at it in the PLOT_MEASURE.COM and MEASURE_MAX.COM
files.  Next, define a directory and a logical name MEASURE_DIR pointing at
it for the data files.  Submit (check the resubmit portion first)
MEASURE.COM to a priority 4 batch queue, where it is guaranteed to run every
hour (you usually have to create a queue not normally in general use).

At the end of the month, or even in the middle of the month, run the
PLOT_MEASURE.COM procedure giving the SI date of the month as the parameter.
For example, November 1985 is given as 851101.  A file yymmdd.OUT (for example
851101.OUT) is produced containing the ReGIS plot output suitable for a VT125
or ReGIS plotter.  NOTE that this procedure assumes that data for three VAXes
is present.  Run MEASURE_MAX.COM, giving a number of monthly files for its
input (eg 850601.MARS,850701.MARS,850801.MARS,850901.MARS).


LOGICAL NAMES:

We put the CDD things in CDD$TOP.SYSTEMS.COMPSERV.ACCOUNTING, although you 
probably have a better place.  Check the definitions of CDD$DEFAULT in the 
PLOT_MEASURE.COM and MEASURE_MAX.COM files.

Files are stored in CSA:[MEASURE], which is also referred to as MEASURE_DIR
by the data acquisition procedure MEASURE.COM.


NODE NAMES:

Our nodenames are not everybody's choice (We had a lot of raised eyebrows 
when mentioning our "VENUS" 780 to Digital people-in-the-know, before the 
8600 was announced!).  You will want to change the PLOT_MEASURE.DTR file to 
suit.  We run these programs on every node of a 4-node cluster (3 780s and 
an 8600).


MDALIB.OLB

This is a bunch of Macro stuff that fills in the holes of Digital's Run-time
Library.  Some of these routines are already obsolete.  The LOC_IOFAST$xxx is 
just some simple RMS calls (See the Pageswapper, September 1984).


EXAMPLES

Included is PLOT_MEASURE.OUT and PLOT_MEASURE.LIS.  The first is a REGIS
plot of response time for an 8600 running about 40 to 60 users doing mostly
word-processing.  The second file is a sixel-graphics form printable on an
LA50 or LN03 for a hardcopy.
