Glossary: Glossary

Glossary

application: a computer program that processes data for a specific use such as for payroll, inventory, or billing.
Application Response Measurement: See ARM (Application Response Management).
ARM: an application programming interface that was developed by an industry partnership and which is used to monitor the availability and performance of software applications. ARM monitors the application tasks that are important to a particular business.
ARM agent: a software vendor's implementation of the ARM API. Each ARM agent is a set of executable routines that can be called by applications. The ARM agent runs concurrently with SAS. The SAS application passes transaction information to the agent, which collects the ARM transaction records and writes them to the ARM log.
ARM appender: a standard logging facility appender, which is configured and customized for accessing performance data. The primary role of the ARM appender is to record ARM transaction events, process the events, and route the events to a specified output destination.
ARM log: an external file that contains records of ARM transactions. See also external file.
ARM macro: a macro that measures the response time of an application. ARM macros invoke ARM API function calls. They permit conditional execution by setting the appropriate macro parameters and macro variables. ARM macros are not part of the SAS macro facility.
ARM performance macros: SAS macros that enable you to identify transactions that you want to log using the SAS logging facility. Insert ARM performance macros in your SAS program at strategic points.
ARM subsystem: a group of internal SAS processing transactions such as PROC and DATA step processing and file input/output processing. You use the ARM system option ARMSUBSYS= to turn on a subsystem or all subsystems.
ARM system options: a group of SAS system options that control various aspects of the SAS ARM interface. See also SAS system option and SAS ARM interface.
pattern layout: a template that you create to format log messages. The pattern layout identifies the type, order, and format of the data that is generated in a log event and delivered as output.
SAS ARM interface: an interface that can be used to monitor the performance of SAS applications. In the SAS ARM interface, the ARM API is implemented as an ARM agent. In addition, SAS supplies ARM macros, which generate calls to the ARM API function calls, and ARM system options, which enable you to manage the ARM environment and to log internal SAS processing transactions. See also ARM (Application Response Measurement).
transaction: a unit of work that is meaningful for monitoring an application's performance. A transaction can be started and stopped one or more times within a single execution of an application. For example, in a SAS application, a transaction could be a step that updates a customer database. In SAS/MDDB Server software, a transaction might be a query on a subcube. Another type of transaction could be internal SAS processing that you want to monitor, such as how many times a SAS file is opened and closed or how long it takes to process a DATA step.

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