Teradata

Teradata® Viewpoint is arguably the most exciting and strategic new product to be released by Teradata Corporation for some time. Teradata Viewpoint Portal is a state-of-the-art extensible Web 2.0 portal framework that is the centerpiece of a new wave of modern applications and management tools produced by Teradata. Delivered as an integrated suite on the Viewpoint appliance, it provides the capability for monitoring and managing your Teradata systems, while at the same time hosting a new set of web-based applications that can be assembled and customized by end users to suit their roles or job functions.

This white paper provides an introduction to Teradata Viewpoint, the technology behind it, and the business benefits of this new solution. It also describes the first set of applications being delivered, which together, are focused on providing a self-service portal for Teradata end users, DBAs, and managers to be able to easily understand the state of their Teradata systems and make business decisions about how to use those systems.

Teradata Viewpoint is a highly anticipated, exciting, and strategic new product from Teradata that reflects a new approach to delivering management and monitoring tools. Instead of a disparate suite of desktop programs, Teradata Viewpoint provides a modern and consistent suite of web-based applications that can be customized to suit the role of the individual end user based on his or her job function.

The first set of newly designed applications will focus on providing a self-service portal for end users, database administrators (DBAs), operational staff, and managers that will allow them to understand the state of their Teradata systems and make informed business decisions about how to use them. Our vision is that Viewpoint will provide a single, unified, and customizable platform and user interface for Teradata management applications.

Teradata Viewpoint is not simply a new technology strategy, however; it is also a major step toward acknowledging your many diverse and varied needs by providing an extensible, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)-ready, application delivery framework whose content can additionally be augmented and customized by independent software vendors, customers, and third-party developers.

Recently, web applications have become far richer in both capabilities and user experience. Advances in technologies, such as Javascript,™ AJAX, portals, and web browsers, are allowing developers to create Rich Internet Applications (often known as Web 2.0 applications) that match their desktop counterparts in terms of interactivity and user experience. Web-based client applications and management tools have become the de facto management mechanism for modern software systems and devices, and end users have become accustomed to using them.

Teradata Viewpoint utilizes these technologies and techniques heavily to provide a modern web-based interface for managing and monitoring Teradata systems. The central strategy of this new architecture is to deliver the majority of client applications and tools as zero footprint web applications. By zero footprint we mean that a user can access and use the applications with a simple web browser, without the need to install any plugins or browser extensions.

Architecturally, Teradata Viewpoint comprises a number of distinct but related components that are packaged into a solution known as the Viewpoint Appliance. The Viewpoint Appliance is an integrated solution for managing and monitoring multiple Teradata instances and a framework for delivering web-based management applications. Once successfully installed, there is little requirement for administration or monitoring of a Viewpoint Appliance. You can purchase Viewpoint with new systems, and there are compatibility kits for installation in older Teradata systems.

The major components of Teradata Viewpoint are:

• Viewpoint Server – the hardware platform on which the solution stack is installed.
• Viewpoint Portal – a web portal framework for delivering client applications.
• Data Collection Service – a daemon process that collects statistics and data from the Teradata system or systems being monitored.
• Portlet Bundles – all new client applications are being delivered as JSR-168 compliant portlets (a portlet is a small, reusable Web component). Portlets with a similar subject area are being packaged and delivered as a bundle for easier and more logical packaging and administration.
  

The following sections describe each of these components, their function and capabilities, and their relationship to the overall architecture.

Viewpoint Server

Viewpoint Server is the underlying hardware platform on which the Viewpoint software components are installed. In the past, Teradata has required customers who purchase management software to provide their own servers on which to install the Teradata tools software (e.g., Teradata Manager). Teradata Viewpoint is a departure from that approach and represents our acknowledgement that customers prefer an integrated, fully supported, managed solution. As such, the Viewpoint appliance is a first-class citizen in the Teradata network topology. It is an Ethernet-connected server that is housed in the Teradata rack and is managed by the Teradata Server Management architecture, just like the Teradata nodes. A new Teradata system with Viewpoint has the Viewpoint appliance mounted in the Teradata rack so you can monitor the Teradata system as soon as it is brought on line.

Viewpoint Portal

Viewpoint Portal is a key component in the overall Viewpoint solution. It is the underlying framework and mechanism for delivering our new web-based client applications. Technically speaking, it is a Java™-based web portal that implements the JSR-168 Portlet Specification. By default, it is installed with the open source Apache Tomcat™ application server and resides on the Viewpoint server.

All of the newly designed client applications will be delivered as portlets that will be exposed through the Viewpoint Portal interface. Additionally, since Viewpoint Portal is JSR-168 compliant, creating content for it will not be the sole purview of Teradata. Instead, new portlets can be created and added by in-house developers, professional services, customers, or third-party developers and vendors. If you have existing web-based applications for managing or monitoring your Teradata systems, you will also be able to seamlessly integrate them within Viewpoint Portal using the External Content portlet (continue reading for more details about this and other portlets).

Security

Security in Teradata Viewpoint is provided by a fully featured, roles-based permissions engine that can function in standalone mode, or it can seamlessly integrate with your pre-existing enterprise authentication solution (e.g., Active Directory) via LDAP. It provides administrators with a fine-grained roles- and permissions-based authorization system that gives them great flexibility in defining which users can perform specific actions or have access to specific data, systems, or portlets.

End-User Customization

Teradata Viewpoint allows users to select content from a menu of portlets and place them anywhere on their dashboard page. The benefit of a portal approach to users is that you can assemble a customized viewing experience from available content that suits your working style or role. Additionally, you can further customize the way the content is displayed using drag and drop to reorder the portlets, or other methods, such as maximize, minimize, and remove. Additional tabs or pages can be added and reordered so you can assemble content in whatever manner or arrangement satisfies working needs across a diverse end-user community.

Administration

Administration of Teradata Viewpoint is done entirely through Viewpoint’s web interface. Portal administrators can perform such tasks as:

• Manage the installed portlet library.
• Enable or disable particular portlets.
• Configure LDAP and backups.
• Monitor and manage Viewpoint performance and DCS space usage.
• Create new users and assign them to roles.
• Define roles and their associated permissions and security constraints.
• Configure system-wide defaults for portlets and their behavior.

Data Collection Server

The Data Collection Service (DCS) is an integral part of Teradata Viewpoint. It is a stand-alone Java daemon process that runs on the Viewpoint Server. The purpose of the DCS is to collect monitoring and performance data about the Teradata Database system(s) being monitored. It performs this exclusively via JDBC and collects the majority of the data via the PM API. These data can include, among other things, query statistics, CPU usage, I/O usage, skew, or custom canary queries.

All of the data collected by the DCS are inserted into a middle-tier cache database and housed in the appliance. This cache database exists to offload the Viewpoint workload from the Teradata Database(s) being monitored. Additionally, this means the Viewpoint solution can continue to function even if those systems are unavailable, thus allowing DBAs to continue to triage problems during system outages. All administration of the DCS; for example, how long to keep the collected data; is performed through the web-based administration interface of Viewpoint.

Portlet Bundles

The initial offering of Teradata Viewpoint consists of a library of portlets that provides both a current view of the workload and throughput of Teradata systems and a historical view of system capacity and use. The portlets to support this functionality come in two distinct portlet bundles:

• Teradata Self-Service Portlets: a suite of portlets for creating a self-service portal for end users.
• Teradata Management Portlets: a suite of portlets that complements the existing Teradata Manager product suite.

The next sections describe some of the new portlets and discuss how they might be used within a customer environment.

My Queries Portlet

If you are a DBA or power user, such as an application developer, you will like My Queries since it allows you to observe your own queries or report requests running in your Teradata systems. Using My Queries, you can select which system (production1, test3, etc.) and what statistics you want to monitor (start time, status, CPU time, skew, etc.).

If you are a business user, there are many things you may want to see. First, you can see that your query is indeed running. And if it’s running, then you can see whether or not it’s progressing or blocked and, if so, by whom. My Queries allows you to understand what’s going on with your queries, how they’re performing, and whether there are any problems – all from your web browser. These types of self-service tools can relieve a lot of anxiety and reduce the number of calls you have to make to the DBAs or help desk.

DBAs and IT staff can also use the Query Monitor and Filtered Queries portlets for monitoring and debugging and to drill down into the details view and see granular statistics for queries, such as I/Os, CPU time, and skewing, or even observe the queries’ SQL or explain plan.

System Health Portlet

System Health Portlet can be used to monitor multiple Teradata systems. Based on a configurable set of metrics, it can be used to display a single indicator of a system’s performance or health. This can be useful for providing a self-service mechanism for end users to find out about their Teradata systems, and, therefore, make decisions about their work day. If a system is critical, it’s probably not a good time to run that monthly report.

For each Teradata system, users with the appropriate permissions can drill down and view the details of that system. At a glance, it’s possible to determine CPU usage, skew, memory, spool, and disk space usage, along with many other very useful metrics. System Health will help in troubleshooting, deciding which system to query, and learning your system behaviors.

A built-in system analysis tool, Rewind allows a DBA to visually rewind one or many Teradata portlets to a specific date or time in the past. This cutting-edge feature gives an administrator an easy way to investigate past system occurrences or issues. Rewind greatly reduces the amount of time to not only find a potential problem query or job, but to ultimately fix the issue. Teradata is the only data warehousing provider that brings this type of “time-travel” functionality to a DBA’s fingertips.

Provide self-service tools to your end users – Teradata Viewpoint provides a web-based portal that end users and managers can use to understand the state of their Teradata system(s). This information can be used to make reasoned and informed decisions about daily work. For example, why is my query running slow? Is it blocked? What step of the plan is currently executing? Is this a good time to submit some queries, or is the system experiencing some problems?

Ultimately, this will make end users more productive and reduce the need for them to call the help desk or DBAs to find out the status of their queries.

Reduced TCO – With Teradata Viewpoint there is no desktop rollout since all of the applications are delivered via the web. The zero client footprint means that any end user who wants to use Teradata Viewpoint need only have a web browser such as Windows Internet Explorer® or Mozilla Firefox®. Rather than having to deploy software on hundreds of business users’ desktops to monitor query status, they can use their web browser. Further, any time a new version of the portal or portlets is released it need only be deployed in a single location (onto Viewpoint Server) for all users to gain access to the updated applications.

Improved user interfaces – The design of the Viewpoint user interface has been done in conjunction with industry experts on information architecture, graphic design, and human factors, as well as domain experts from Teradata Professional Services, Teradata Engineering, and key customer advisors. The new tools are not direct translations of the old tools, but rather are a new set of tools and displays whose functions have been designed to match end-user roles and job functions. Prior to implementation, functional prototypes have been subjected to validation and usability tests at customer sites, generating feedback from all of the intended user constituents.

This results in a set of user interfaces that better exposes the critical data required by end users to support their job functions while at the same time making it easier to identify critical information about system state and system exceptions. Over time, many other Teradata tools and management utilities, such as Teradata Dynamic Workload Manager and AWS, will convert some or all user interfaces and deliver them via Viewpoint, providing a consistent user interface to all facets of Teradata systems management.

Monitor multiple instances of Teradata Database – Teradata Viewpoint’s Data Collection Service natively supports monitoring multiple instances of Teradata from a single location; all that you need is JDBC access to the systems being monitored. This capability means the previous requirement for multiple Teradata Manager server instances is eliminated and that you can now manage and monitor all of your Teradata systems from a single location.

Moreover, end users now have access to information about queries or workloads from multiple systems presented in a unified form in Viewpoint Portal. As a result, end users will be able to make better decisions about to which system to issue a query in a Dual Active environment, for example.

Horizontal scalability – From the outset, each component in the Teradata Viewpoint Appliance has been designed to be scalable. It is possible to deploy multiple instances of Viewpoint to support larger numbers of end users or multiple instances of the DCS to share the monitoring of many Teradata systems. This scalability includes true failover feature/functionality for high availability of Viewpoint.

Seamlessly integrate external content – Teradata Viewpoint is not limited to displaying content created by Teradata. If you have pre-existing web applications, you can easily integrate them into the Viewpoint portal using the External Content portlet. Like a mashup, the External Content portlet supports displaying content from an enterprise web page side by side with Teradata portlets.

Alternatively, in the future, it will be possible to use the Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) standard to consume portlet content from your existing web portal and display it in Viewpoint.

Deploy your own content – Teradata recognizes that it will never be able to build a set of tools that satisfies every unique requirement you have. Therefore, from the outset, Viewpoint Portal has been designed to be an extensible solution. To support the creation of additional content, a Portlet Development Kit (PDK) that comprises a set of resources, such as development tutorials, code snippets, reusable widgets, UI components, style sheets, and guides, will be made available for you to build and deploy your own portlets. The PDK will be available for customers and ISVs to create their own portlets that can be deployed into Viewpoint.

Capable of supporting diverse users’ needs, Teradata Viewpoint is an extensible platform where content developed by Teradata or third-party developers and the wider portlet community can coexist in a unified and consistent display of system state and performance.

The initial focus on the Teradata Self-Service and Teradata Management portlet bundles provides you with the opportunity to encourage your end users to become self sufficient, making better use of your Teradata systems, while also reducing the TCO for management tools and future upgrades. Over the next few years, Teradata client applications will be redesigned, delivered, and replaced by Teradata Viewpoint, further enhancing its value and role and providing a consistent user interface to all facets of Teradata management.

About the Author

Dr. Todd Papaioannou is the Client Software CTO for Teradata R&D and has served as the Chief Architect of Teradata Viewpoint since its inception. Since joining Teradata, his work has focused on continuous integration, agile development, enterprise fit, service oriented architectures and database extensibility. Prior to joining Teradata, Dr. Papaioannou held various technology leadership positions in Engineering or Professional Services at Greenplum/Metapa. Dr. Papaioannou holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence and Distributed Systems.