Application Shaping

The App List in the App Center contains a list of all discovered applications. If an application is not in the list, an application definition can be created from a process or process group in the map from an App Explorer tab.

Map zoom levels 3 and 4 show individual process lists for machines. Right-clicking on a process or clicking on the context menu indicator for the process shows the menu item App Shaping with an additional sub-menu. Use these Application Shaping options to customize the applications discovered by FactFinder. This menu is only available in the App Explorer and Machine View tabs.

These App Shaping actions are retroactive and exclusive to the FactFinder Console on which they are performed. Snapshot files are only affected by these changes if they are opened on the same FactFinder Console on which the definition was created. Snapshots are self-contained files, and App Shaping is not part of the data saved in the files.

Renaming an Application

To rename an application, click on the context menu indicator for it in the App List of the App Center. Select View App Properties to open a properties dialog. From the Name tab, rename the application. Application renaming affects the application going forward.

The View App Properties menu item is also available from an App Explorer view—right-click on the white background of the map in an App Explorer view.

Defining an Application

To define a process as the root of a new application, select one of the following:

• Create new application for <processname> on <machine>
• Create new application for <processname> (everywhere)

Create new application for <processname> on <machine> defines the process as the root of an application just for the process on the particular machine. Any instance of the same process on any other machine will not be considered part of the application. However, if Create new application for <processname> (everywhere) is selected, every instance of the process on any machine will be included in the application definition. If the everywhere option is selected and an App Explorer tab is opened for the new application, all machines that have the process used to define the application root will be included in the application. This could lead to a very large application if the process is running on a large number of machines.

Accept the default name or give it a different name. The new application immediately appears in the App List of the App Center. This definition only applies to the specific instance of the application. It does not change the roots of other applications. The application definition is persistent across FactFinder restarts and is specific to the FactFinder Console on which it is created. User-defined application names are not saved in Snapshot files.

Removing a User-Defined Application

To remove a user-defined application (discovered applications can not be removed), click on the context menu indicator for it in the App List of the App Center, and select Remove application. The application is immediately removed from the App List.

Excluding or Including a Process

To exclude a process from an application definition, select Exclude <processname> from application or Exclude <processname> on <machine> from application from the App Shaping menu. To include a process in an application definition, select Include <processname> from application or Include <processname> on <machine> from application from the App Shaping menu.

To view a list of process inclusions and exclusions for an application, go to the App List in the App Center, click the context menu indicator for the application, and select View App Properties. Click on the Rules tab to view the root policy, the list of inclusions, and the list of exclusions.

Including and excluding processes affect the filtered drawing of dependencies and non-dependencies in the App Explorer. It does not define a new application root or alter the application's response time metric.