What is DAC (Desktop Application Check)?

Desktop Application Monitoring for Windows Desktop Applications, an MS Windows Desktop Application monitoring solution that consists of these components:

  1. A DAC Desktop Recorder (Introduction): An Apica Desktop Application that records the actions and expectations of the targeted Windows desktop application and turns this into a scenario that can be uploaded in ASM as a DAC.

  2. A Desktop Application Check (DAC), which schedules the scenario in ASM for regular monitoring and reports back the results to the ASM portal for analysis.

  3. A Desktop Application Agent, which is the private agent that executes the scenario, records the observed metrics for the targeted application.

Desktop Application Monitoring expands Apica Synthetic Monitoring beyond monitoring HTTP/HTTPS website applications and APIs. The DAC solution was specifically built for Windows desktop, non-web, applications. So now the DAC adds a long-term understanding of Windows Desktop Application performance and availability.

WHAT PROBLEM ARE WE ADDRESSING?

The Monitoring Gap: Monitoring only networked applications and services with network protocol level (HTTP/s) or the browser level (e.g., Selenium) scripts overlooks applications that do not fit that model (I.e. those which were developed before the Browser-centric view, or use proprietary protocols or are just too complicated at the protocol level.

Examples

  • Desktop-Centric Applications, with very advanced and sophisticated user interfaces and local processing, with lots of forms

    • SAP R3

    • Oracle Forms

    • AutoCAD

    • Legacy banking/financial applications

    • HR applications

    • Thick Clients

  • “Thin” desktop clients

    • Terminal Emulators

    • Citrix

DAC MONITORING USE CASES

Based on Monitoring Desktop Application performance over time

  • Ensure your User Desktop Apps Are Always Available

  • Assure your SLAs for the desktop services and performance are up to user expectations and application design

  • Refine the user experience

  • Tune the application servers for optimum load and efficiency

  • Correlate performance to infrastructure load

HOW THIS WORKS

  • Record and script the user journey directly on the desktop

  • Start the application, click on positions, buttons, images

  • Enter text and complex key-commands

  • Wait for the response and assert that it is the expected one

  • See results presented in Interactive dashboards with

    • Waterfall graphs

    • Trend reports

    • Summaries providing reliable insights on performance and availability

Next Steps

More information

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