What is Web Application Monitoring?

If you've had any experience dealing with web applications, then the concept of web application monitoring is nothing new. While this topic is well-known among many IT departments and web developers, its true purpose and potential of often misunderstood. In order to effectively monitor and manage web applications, it's essential that all administrators gain a solid understanding of the principles, goals and basics of web app monitoring. It's only with this knowledge that enterprise administrators are able to truly understand the complexities of complete web application monitoring.

General Application Monitoring Principles

While you may be familiar with web application monitoring solutions, it's essential that you understand the general principles of this effective management and monitoring technique. Some of the most general principles include:

I. Application Baselines - The first principle of application monitoring is creating and maintaining a defined set of baseline procedures and application behaviors. Without identifying the "normal ranges" of application components, it's nearly impossible to determine if an application is engaging in errors or issues.

II. Application Trending (or Patterns) - The trends of an application are among the most important elements when it comes to an effective monitoring solution. Trending information allows administrators to see how specific values and events alter over a set period of time. It's only when administrators understand the application trends based upon days of the week or specific hours, that they're able to adjust internal components to compensate for these alterations in usage and traffic.

III. Application Scope of Use - This principle of application monitoring states what components of an application are being monitored, which is essential to streamline the monitoring solution. For example, if a monitoring is simply "pinging" a server to ensure its operational, a "green light" does not necessarily mean the application is fully functional. It only means the app is live and is able to communicate with the server.

Reducing Unnecessary Application Noise

In the realm of application performance monitoring, the "noise" is not referring to how the application runs, but rather what information is sent to the administrator. Often times, administrators are overloaded with unnecessary information pertaining to the operation of web applications, or "noise." Unfortunately, without an effective and intuitive web application monitoring solution, it's far too easy for administrators to become bogged down with this noise and miss vital information regarding the actual operation and functionality of an app (you can read more application functionality here).

Application monitoring allows administrators a clear view into the most important actions and processes of an application to help them spot information that points to a critical error. Some of the most effective ways to reduce application noise is by:

I. Utilizing Application Reporting Hiearchy - By creating a hierarchy, with the most important information placed at the top of this "pyramid," administrators see the most vital information before anything else. This can be the difference between addressing an error before it's critical or only witnessing an error after a myriad of users contact administrators due to a malfunctioning application.

II. Create Error Groups - Instead of having a single notification sent for each error, even if it's the same error, create error groups. Therefore, instead of receiving 100 error reports for the same error, administrators are only sent a single error file with the number of instances within the message.

III. Create a Root-Cause Analysis Report - The fact is, most application errors occur due to a very basic reason, such as a network server outage. When this is the case, the application is actually running fine, it was simply the network that had a hiccup in operation. With a root-cause analysis report, administrators are sent a single message regarding the error and its cause, instead of multiple notifications for an error that is not based in application infrastructure. You can explore so of the problems, as mentioned earlier with a root cause testing tool like EverystepAutomation, or a variety of other tools that are available on the web.

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