Key Terms
This topic provides an alphabetical list of the most relevant AAI terms and concepts.
[A] [B] [C] [F] [H] [J] [N] [P] [R] [S] [T] [W]
A
average duration
AAI uses the moving average prediction model to calculate the average duration of job and jobstream runs considering the entire job/jobstream history and excluding the outliers. AAI uses the average duration values for all predictions and calculations.
AAI database
Central repository for all data such as the job definitions and event data from the workload automation engines, and any other data generated by AAI. It is recommended to use two instances of the database:
-
The real-time database, which is used by the AAI Platform for persisting scheduler data in real-time
-
The historical database, which is an identical copy of the real-time database instance, created via mirroring and used by the AAI Reporting Server for generating reports
See Automation Analytics & Intelligence Architecture.
AAIPlatform
Platform in which all processing scheduler data takes place. This includes interpreting job definitions and event data from the workload automation engines, persisting information in the real-time AAI database instance, maintaining prediction models, updating jobstreams, generating alerts, and servicing user interfaces.
See Automation Analytics & Intelligence Architecture.
AAI Reporting Server
See Reporting Server.
B
business area
Business areas are organizational categories that reflect the structure of your business. Jobstreams are assigned to business areas. Business areas are assigned to users. This means that in addition to organizing processes logically as needed in your business, business areas give you easy access to the data you need for your daily work. Business areas also facilitate many other essential functions related to jobstreams, such as filtering, managing alerts, defining processing cycles and many more.
See: Business Areas
business area processing cycles
Time frames in which you can expect the batch processes in the business area to run. For example, let's suppose that the batch processes for the Human Resources department kick off every day at 7 pm and that they must be finished by 7 am the next day. The batch processes for the Finance department kick off every day at 7:30 am and must be finished at 12:30 the same day. In this case, the Human Resources business area cycle would be 12 hours starting at 7 pm every night and ending at 7 am each morning. The Finance cycle would start at 7:30 every day and end 5 hours later the same day.
See Business Cycles.
C
compatibility matrix
A tool that allows you to check version compatibility and cross-product dependencies for Automation Analytics & Intelligence. It provides compatibility information for various Broadcom products.
configuration tool
A tool for AAI Administrators to configure communication and database options for data calls and AAI database maintenance from a GUI interface. Alternatively, you could configure them using CLI commands for each configuration option.
See Configuration Tool.
connector
Connectors are responsible for gathering the data from the scheduler and providing it to the AAI Platform where it is normalized and then stored in the AAI database.
critical path
A specific sequence of jobs within a jobstream that directly affect or are predicted to affect the completion time of a jobstream. It singles out every job in the jobstream that comprises the longest path required for a particular jobstream run to be successful. This means that if any of the jobs on the critical path is delayed, the jobstream is also delayed. If a job is not on the critical path, any delay associated with this job does not necessarily affect the completion time of the jobstream. However, if a job that is not on the critical path is delayed enough to affect the completion of the jobstream, AAI adds it dynamically to the critical path in real-time. Therefore, the critical path can change from run to run.
F
finish to start
(also finish to start delay) The amount of time that elapses between the completion of a job and the start of the next job.
forecast, forecasting, forecasted
A temporal characterization of a future jobstream or job execution. A forecasted execution is a jobstream or job execution that is anticipated by the system to run at a future time. All time values associated with a forecasted execution are known as forecasted times. AAI uses historical execution data to calculate a prognosis of when and how long a jobstream and the jobs within it will run. These values appear on monitoring screens, dashboards, and reports to help you anticipate upcoming events and scheduler load demands.
Do not confuse forecasting with predicted times, which are anticipated run times of currently running executions.
See also predicted time.
H
historical database
See AAI database.
J
jobstream
Jobstreams are containers of jobs that are related to each other, that run together and that end in the execution of the target job. The jobs are the batch processes that are automated by the underlying scheduler. The target job is the end point that you are interested in monitoring and for which you have set up an SLA. The jobstream collects the runtime data of the target job and its direct upstream predecessors. As the individual jobs execute, AAI keeps track of how long it takes for each job to execute. Then, it aggregates those times over the entire jobstream, providing an up-to-date picture of what is going on: Runtime analysis, statistics, averages, and so forth. This information is the basis of the AAI's monitoring and supervision tools such as SLA management and alerting.
See Jobstreams.
N
NPTF (Not Predicted to Finish)
One of the possible states of a jobstream or jobstream run. It means that some job execution path has failed along the way and the jobstream will not be able to finish.
P
parent
The parent of a job in a jobstream is the container object where that job runs. For example, the parent of a job in AutoSys is called a BOX; in Automic Automation it could be a Workflow or a Schedule. Not all schedulers use this type of container job, so this parameter is available only for schedulers where the container concept applies.
parentage
(For a job in a jobstream) Fully qualified path from the root object all the way down to a particular job. It lets you uniquely identify the job. This information is extremely important for schedulers that allow jobs to run more than once in multiple contexts (from different places and in multiple jobstreams). The parentage identifies the exact instance of the job. IWS, ESP, Tidal and Automic Automation allow jobs to run multiple times in different contexts. AutoSys does not allow this, therefore, in AutoSys parent and parentage are always the same.
predicted time
A predicted time is temporal characteristic of a currently running or planned job or jobstream run. Based on previous run data, momentary internal monitoring of the current execution, and load factors, AAI can calculate predictions and display them on monitoring screens and dashboards.
See also, forecast, forecasting, forecasted.
processing cycle
See business area processing cycles.
R
real-time database
See AAI database.
Reporting Server
The Reporting Server supports customizing visual dashboards, generating file-based reports in many formats (such as PDF, CSV, Word, and PowerPoint); scheduling automatically generated reports, distributing reports via email, externalizing reports via URL; and building custom reports with an ad-hoc report builder.
See Automation Analytics & Intelligence Architecture.
S
scheduler
In AAI, a scheduler is a representation of an automation engine that regularly provides data that populates AAI's time-based dashboards, charts, reports and so forth. AAI gathers data from these instances at predefined intervals.
SLA
Team commitment to provide a service to another team with a certain level of quality within a specific time frame.
Time of day on which the target job in a jobstream must end.
start-to-running
(also start-to-running delay) Time that elapses between a job turning from the starting to the running state.
T
target job
The target job is the end point in the jobstream. It is the end job against which you track an SLA. It is typically a job that you consider critical to your business: either the job needs to finish by a particular time, or it is critical to your environment in some other way. AAI automatically creates historical views of the jobstream by tracing the upstream dependencies of the target job. It is used as criterion to determine lateness; if the target job is late or predicted to be late, alerts are triggered.
See Jobstreams.
W
what-if time
When a jobstream is not predicted to finish (status NPTF), you can trigger AAI to calculate the time when the target job would complete if the processing would be continued right now. This is known as the what-if time,which is the answer to the question, "What if, the processing would continue right now; when would my execution end?"
This allows you, as an operator who understands the executions of the day, to add this to your estimated time to resolution, and have an idea when the execution job would really complete. You can communicate this to people waiting for the execution results. You can also add that manually as the new predicted end time value to help you continue to monitor the executions in a meaningful way.
See also predicted time.