If you’ve ever had to manage a Pro2 implementation in OpenEdge, you will know that from time to time, the queues can back up or even get blocked. Finding out the source of the problem can be fiddly, particularly if you have to connect to another server to find the Pro2 implementation.
ProTop has been able to monitor the queues for a good while now, but until recently, all you saw was the headline figure for each queue.
With the latest version of ProTop, this has all changed. ProTop is now able to give insights into the status of each table. This makes tracking down the problems so much easier.
Looking at the screenshots, I can see the name of the table that is lagging, by how many records it is behind, and also which queue the table belongs to, as denoted by the number after the table name.
Additionally, this information is now captured within the Alert/Alarm detail, meaning you go into a potential emergency with more information at your fingertips.
With this information, I can decide whether the tables that are lagging are ones that often lag, are expected to lag, or need further investigation to establish why there is a lag. In this case, I was able to see that these tables don’t normally lag. So, I logged on to the Pro2 server and troubleshooted. The data in the tables overflowed the SQL widths defined and failed to load, so we tidied up the data on the Progress side.
At other times, I can easily see that these are tables on which maintenance has been carried out, and therefore the lag is expected, so I don’t have to take further action.
These new features are available to everyone with an active ProTop subscription, so go ahead and upgrade now. And if you’ve already got Pro2 monitoring in place, then you don’t need to do anything. The new data works right out of the box.
James Palmer
Senior Solutions Architect
