HP OpenVMS Systems

1. What is T4 & Friends?
2. What is a T4-style format?
3. What is Time Line Vizualizer (TLViz)?
4. What is CSVPNG?
5. How can the T4 & Friends tools save time?
6. Can T4 & Friends help me with data other than OpenVMS performance statistics?
7. Where can I learn more about the T4 & Friends approach?
8. Where can I find out more about T4 & Friends?

1. What is T4 & Friends?
T4 stands for Total Timeline Tracking Tool. It runs on HP OpenVMS systems with the purpose of capturing and consolidating important OpenVMS performance statistics. Pulling from several (currently seven) independent yet cooperating sources, T4 lets you create a relatively compact composite timeline view of the day-to-day performance of each important OpenVMS node.

2. What is a T4-style format?
The output of a T4 collection is a simple two-dimensional table formatted as a readily reusable comma separated value (CSV) file. Not all CSV files are in T4-style format. T4-style tables have exactly one row per measurement time sample and one column for each important factor that has been measured. Files that meet this standard have proven to be readily reusable by a variety of analysis software (collectively known as the downstream "Friends of T4"), including TLViz, CSVPNG, and Microsoft Excel. The T4-style format is not restricted to OpenVMS—any important time series data can be converted to and thereby benefit from this readily reusable format.

3. What is Time Line Vizualizer (TLViz)?
TLViz is a time-saving interactive application that runs on Microsoft Windows systems. TLViz accepts T4-style formatted CSV files as input. With TLViz you can look at complex performance time-series histories containing hundreds or even thousands of variables. TLViz lets you look at individual metrics one at a time in rapid succession, or quickly look at the relationship between two or more metrics. TLViz also includes special built-in capabilities for comparing before-and-after behaviors.

4. What is CSVPNG?
CSVPNG is a command-line-driven tool that runs on HP AlphaServer systems, HP Integrity servers, and DOS under Microsoft Windows systems. It accepts standard T4-style CSV files as input and permits automatic creation of standard PDF or HTML reports containing pre-selected timeline graphs formatted to your specifications. It also provides a method to automate trimming large CSV files down to more a manageable size. CSVPNG can reduce a file with thousands of variables to a subset of variables of your choosing. CSVPNG contains many other options for manipulating T4-style files and automating the most commonly requested operations on such files. For more information see the CSVPNG.TXT file included in the kit.

5. How can the T4 & Friends tools save time?
Many of our customers and partners have discovered that they can use the T4 & Friends tools out of the box to automate and speed up their most important performance work. Others have approached the T4 model as an example of possibilities and have extended these tools or built their own similar tools to satisfy local requirements.

6. Can T4 & Friends help me with data other than OpenVMS performance statistics?
Anyone can create their own T4-style CSV file from their most important performance data, so new data collectors can be added as needed. Many new T4-style collectors have already been added and more are in progress. Each T4 collection is a composite of seven separate collectors working together to produce a coordinated multi-dimensional view of OpenVMS performance.

7. Where can I learn more about the T4 & Friends approach?
The OpenVMS Advanced Technical Boot Camp (June 5-10, 2005) included a detailed three-hour T4 & Friends workshop that focused on the latest developments and time-saving improvements. If you would like more information about this well-attended workshop or information about future planned events, please send an e-mail to T4 & Friends.

8. Where can I find out more about T4 & Friends?
For further information about T4 & Friends please see the following references:

• Timeline-driven collaboration with T4 & Friends: an introduction to the T4 & Friends approach
• Adding a friend to T4 & Friends: how to build new T4-style collectors
• Parallelism and performance in the OpenVMS TCP/IP kernel: an example of T4 in action, demonstrating the power of comparing before-and-after time-series behavior
• OpenVMS scalability with Oracle Rdb: an important benchmark that achieved a sustained rate of 1.8 million transactions per minute documented with T4-style data

Note: For more information, please send e-mail to T4 & Friends. We will update this section regularly based on your questions.