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iStrobe and the Application Development Lifecycle

You can use iStrobe in all phases of application design and development:

  • Design and build

  • Test and quality assurance

  • Production

  • Maintenance

Design and Build

In the design and build phases, you can use Strobe and iStrobe to assess alternative programming techniques by measuring the performance of various test cases. This approach helps you to evaluate the resource demands of code produced by a compiler or code generator, the relative efficiency of algorithms, and the effect on resource use of such factors as data type. You can also use these products to determine the relative resource demands of data access methods in response to different parameters. Using Strobe and iStrobe in the design and build stages yields benefits for future applications because application programmers develop a greater awareness of the performance impact of design and coding decisions.

Test and Quality Assurance

You can incorporate Strobe and iStrobe into the test and quality assurance phase to confirm design assumptions about a new or modified application's resource requirements. To do so, measure the application the first time it goes into production. You can compare its resource use with performance benchmarks of the production release it is replacing. With this approach, you can ensure that inefficiencies have not been introduced unintentionally and that coding changes have not impaired application performance.

Production

You can use Strobe and iStrobe to ensure a smoothly running production environment by improving the performance of online applications whose response time or transaction throughput is unsatisfactory, and by reducing the run times of batch processing programs that are creating scheduling problems. Periodically deploying Strobe in production, and analyzing using iStrobe, allows you to detect the effects of changes in workload, environment, and application function on application performance.

Maintenance

In maintenance, programmers make changes to existing code — whether to fix a problem, enhance application function, or re-fit the application to run in a new operating environment. Using Strobe and iStrobe in maintenance helps ensure that application efficiency continues to conform to established benchmarks.

When you first implement iStrobe as a tool in your application performance management strategy, you are likely to discover substantial opportunities for improving the general efficiency of your data center, enhancing service, and reducing processing costs. During maintenance, you can employ Compuware products in a systematic effort to reclaim system resources used by inefficient applications. For example, you can free resources for additional processing by targeting those batch processing programs and online applications that place the highest demand on the system. The IBM System Management Facility (SMF) provides job accounting data that allows you to identify the programs and subsystem applications that are heavy users of computing resources and are therefore the best candidates for evaluation and improvement. Or you can use AutoStrobe's Candidate Processing facility to determine which applications are using too much CPU resource or taking too long to execute.