What is the Application Performance Index?
Air Date: 08/25/2022
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Show Notes:
Apdex scoring. What is it and why do we care?
Apdex is short for “Application Performance Index”
- Satisfied
- Tolerating
- Frustrated
How to calculate from New Relic:
https://newrelicuniversity.github.io/apdex-calculator/
More information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apdex
https://www.freshworks.com/website-monitoring/what-is-apdex/
https://www.app-metrics.io/getting-started/metric-types/apdex/
https://raygun.com/blog/apdex-score-guide/
Where does the score come from?
The Apdex User Group: https://www.apdex.org/
Who reports Apdex?
https://www.apdex.org/index.php/apdex-vendors/
Datadog, New Relic, and CatchPoint are 3 notable vendors who support it:
https://docs.datadoghq.com/tracing/guide/configure_an_apdex_for_your_traces_with_datadog_apm/
https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/apm/new-relic-apm/apdex/apdex-measure-user-satisfaction/
https://www.catchpoint.com/blog/apdex
Apdex is a simplified metric which may have some use rolling up complex metrics to a management level that isn’t concerned with the details. However, it’s very easy to lose the devil in those details and not see the whole performance picture. It’s not going to correlate to well performing applications and how well the systems are doing in the way full-stack Observability will. It applies to end-to-end performance of web sites from the end user perspective, not to underlying protocols, API calls, and headless transactions. It doesn’t address outliers.
There are other metrics out there. Buddy Brewer at Velocity: https://youtu.be/jsAdZzKRDqc talks about the Consumer Performance Index (beyond APDEX). There is even a patent filed for it, but you cannot find much about it after 2015. Was it just a marketing play?
https://bospar.com/case_study/soasta-next-level-rebranding/
Akamai does not appear to have brought CPI metrics from the SOASTA MPulse acquisition:
https://developer.akamai.com/blog/2021/05/24/comparing-perceived-performance-metrics
Sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by Micro Focus and LoadRunner solutions. Performance matters. Did you know that LoadRunner solutions have the largest community of practitioners? Join the community at https://community.microfocus.com/adtd/b/sws-alm
Performance Engineering The LoadRunner Family Page:
https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/portfolio/performance-engineering/overview
Performance Playlist (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlUdEXI83_XoQrAsCj2A92v5AmXqVfoIO
This podcast is sponsored by StormForge. The StormForge Platform focuses on AI-powered software designed to help DevOps teams release with confidence and IT leaders to realize the promise of cloud-native – faster innovation with higher quality, resiliency, scalability, and efficiency. https://stormforge.io
This podcast is sponsored by Orasi Software. For over 20 years, Orasi, a DevSecOps innovator, has helped companies innovate, accelerate, and automate the entire software delivery lifecycle. Orasi AppSec and OrasiCloud solutions and services offer full lifecycle support and integration to ensure scalability of transformative applications. Also, the makers of OrasiLabs, the “train anyone anywhere anytime” AWS cloud-native virtual eLearning platform, Orasi works with hundreds of global brands as customers and partners, including Fortune 500 companies, across a variety of industries. Find out more at https://hubs.ly/Q01kKMKW0
