When you use SEQUEL ViewPoint on your system, you can have it track who is using what and when. You can see if access paths are created, which files are queried, and how many records are retrieved. You can do all this with SEQUEL auditing.

What is SEQUEL auditing?
You access auditing through the ViewPoint Administrator. Auditing allows you to monitor your investment in SEQUEL. Its inquiries and reports help you get the most out of SEQUEL by showing you where SEQUEL is used most heavily and how it affects your system’s resources. Using the auditor’s inquiry and analysis tools, you can effectively manage the query environment.

There are three phases to the auditing process: collection, distribution, and analysis. SEQUEL collects data in a System i journal and its attached receiver. You turn on the auditing process through each user’s default data area, to collect auditing data selectively. After you collect some data, you can run the “Manage Audit Data” process to extract data from the receiver and distribute it to files in the audit database. Then, you can analyze the data using summary and detail inquiries and graphs.

Getting started
Data collection and distribution takes place “behind the scenes” and must be done before data analysis. To begin, go into the ViewPoint Administrator and select the SEQUEL Auditing option. Then, follow this easy, three-step process:

1. Choose the Set Audit Default option, to decide which users to audit. Check the box next to each user ID you want to audit.

2. Wait a day or two to allow information to collect.

3. Select the Manage Audit Data option (available only to administrators) to move the data from the journal receiver to the database. (In the future, you can schedule this option to run automatically.)

Once the submitted job completes, you are ready to analyze SEQUEL’s use.

Analysis
You can view the collected data as either summary or detailed information. To display SEQUEL requests by user, object, job name, and access path, choose Show Audit Data. Click User to display summary values of SEQUEL activity for each user you are auditing. Double-click a user to display detailed information about that user.

You can analyze information by object or job name; display a list of files, views, and reports used; or create a list by job name. To display detailed information, just double-click the item. The detail inquiry also shows a command summary that includes a graph.

The Access Path Detail window displays summary-level information about which access paths are used, by whom, and how often. You can drill into the access paths to show the specifics of when access paths were used.

Summary
The SEQUEL ViewPoint Administrator lets you access auditing features that help you keep track of the SEQUEL requests run on your system. It’s an easy way to show your management the importance of your investment in SEQUEL.

Contributed by Sheryl Quinlan, Technical Consultant

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 at 9:56 am and is filed under SEQUEL. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.