Product Review

Not surprisingly, Web services management tools are quickly appearing to assist developers and system administrators alike with the maintenance of service-based applications. One such product is AmberPoint Express, a free Web services management and monitoring tool whose mission is to provide developers with the ability to "...incrementally measure, debug and fine-tune the performance and functionality of their Web services..." The product is currently available in three flavors: .NET, WebSphere, and Apache Tomcat with Axis. Versions tailored to other major application servers will be released in the future.

AmberPoint Express is targeted to developers and provides the functionality for monitoring and debugging Web services. However, all of AmberPoint's products are based on a distributed architecture geared to managing and monitoring Web services applications. The key components of their architecture are:

• Agents: Deployed at the interface between Web services and client applications. Serve as the tools of instrumentation for applications.
• Analytical servers: Serve as data aggregators across multiple agents while maintaining historical data.
• User interface/desktop console: A set of desktop and Web-based user interfaces that provide views to the information collected and aggregated by the analytical servers.

How It Works
When AmberPoint Express is installed, instrumentation agents that monitor traffic against the deployed services are plugged into the application server. For the .NET release, agents are installed directly into IIS, while the Tomcat version is shipped with a preconfigured release of Tomcat 4.0.6 (Express may also be installed on an existing instance of Tomcat). An additional feature of the .NET release is direct integration within Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET IDE, providing access to the debugging functionality.

Using AmberPoint Express
The main user interface to AmberPoint Express is the Web-based console seen in Figure 1. The left side of the console shows the Web services that are deployed on the current server, each of which is expandable to show its operations. Services that are currently being monitored show a small bar-graph icon that when hovered over shows the total number of messages and faults consumed by that service. The right-hand portion of the console contains a very nice Flash MX application that provides real-time status information about the currently selected service. When the mouse is moved over the main graph, a callout shows the details of the service events within the slice of time under the mouse pointer. The information includes the total messages, the number of faults, and the total processing time.

The lower section of the information area shows summary statistics for the currently selected Web service within the context of the overall time interval. Figure 1 is an example of the five-minute time interval. Summary information is presented for the entire five minutes, including the number of successful messages, the number of faults, average response time, the average number of successful messages transferred, and the maximum number of messages transferred. Additionally, summary information is presented for the five-second time slice locked on the graph. A time slice may be locked by clicking the mouse within the graph at any data point. If viewing the graph using the one-hour interval, the same information is presented; however, each individual time slice is one minute in duration.

Data from this view may also be exported to Microsoft Excel for further analysis. By clicking the Export Data link, an Excel spreadsheet is generated on demand and downloaded in a separate browser window. The data exported includes the start and end times of each time slice in the graph, the number of messages and faults processed, and the average and maximum response times for the operation or service.

Debugging Tools
AmberPoint Express provides several tools to assist developers with debugging their Web services. The Messages tab provides access to the collection of SOAP messages transferred to and from a particular service. This listing includes a rolling collection of 20MB worth of request and response service data that may be viewed in a hierarchical structure or its raw XML form. The Messages tab also provides a powerful query mechanism to easily filter out unwanted information. The query language itself presented in plain English, is intuitive, and is easy to apply.

Developers may also send test messages to any monitored Web service using the AmberPoint Express GUI. By selecting an individual operation on a service and invoking the Send Message operation, a new message is created and presented to the developer. At this point, the data to be sent may be edited, along with the number of messages to send and the address to send the message to. For example, if a production message fails, the console can be used to create a test message from the production service, which can in turn be directed at a test server, eliminating the risk of modifying production data.

Working in Visual Studio
As I mentioned earlier, AmberPoint Express is integrated into Visual Studio (the Whidbey release of Visual Studio will include AmberPoint Express). Projects may be added or removed from the set of managed applications through a new item on the project's Properties page. Once a project is built, its status is updated in the main AmberPoint Web console.

In addition to the managed property, a new item is placed in the Tools menu of Visual Studio, providing quick access to the View Messages and Send Test Message areas of the AmberPoint console. These items are available for any item in a project that is being managed by AmberPoint.

Company Info
AmberPoint, Inc
155 Grand Avenue, Suite 404
Oakland, CA 94612
Phone: 510-663-6300
E-mail: info@amberpoint.com
Sales: sales@amberpoint.com

Download Information
http://express.amberpoint.com/?wsj=free

Summary
AmberPoint Express is an easy-to-use, well-designed management and debugging system for Web services that keeps the needs of the developer in mind. Its Web console is thoughtfully designed and intuitive, and the tool is architected in such a way that it may be added to a project at any phase. Overall, this is an excellent utility for Web services developers to have on hand for their projects.