Appendix B. Using Rational Robot in the Tivoli Management Agent environment 441
Figure B-1 ETP Average Response Time
In order for TMTP/ETP to record this data, the ARM API calls must be made from
Rational Robot scripts.
The ARM API
The ARM API is an Open Group standard for a set of API calls that allow you to
measure the performance of any application. The most common use of the API is
to measure response time, but it can also be used to record application
availability and account for application usage. The ARM API is documented at
http://www.opengroup.org/management/arm.htm. The ARM Version 2
implementation is a set of C API calls, as shown in Figure B-2 on page 442.
442 End-to-End e-business Transaction Management Made Easy
Figure B-2 ARM API Calls
There are six ARM API calls:
arm_init This is used to define an application to the response time
agent.
arm_getid This is used to define a transaction to the response time
agent. A transaction is always a child of an application.
arm_start This call is used to start the response time clock for the
transaction.
arm_update This call is optional. It can be used to send a heartbeat to
the response time agent, while the transaction is running.
You might want to code this call in a long-running
transaction, to receive confirmations that it is still running.
arm_stop This call is used to stop the response time clock when a
transaction completes.
arm_end This call ends collection on the application. It is effectively
the opposite of the arm_getid and arm_init calls.
The benefit of using ARM is that you can place the calls that start and stop the
response time clock in exactly the parts of the script that you want to measure.
This is done by defining individual applications and transactions within the script,
and placing the ARM API calls at transaction start and transaction end.

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