JobNet Visual

JobNet Visual does currently only support english language. However, localization is in progress.

What is JobNet Visual?

JobNet Visual for Power BI is a graphical visualization of parallel processes to identify overloading, performance bottlenecks and candidates for optimization. It can be used in Data Warehousing or any other batch processing scenario to

• visualize highly parallelized processing scenarios,
• highlight the critical path to identify candidates for optimization,
• retrieve instant runtime KPIs and compare them over multiple executions to check optimization progress.

The visual retrieves runtime details for jobs or processes and organizes them into lanes to display parallel executions. The total number of lanes thus visualizes the degree of parallelism required by the executed jobnet scenario.

Additionally, a job runtime can be attributed with up to four sub-runtimes which are drawn in different graphical patterns. Examples for sub-runtimes within a job could be init-start delays, lock wait times or any other time periods within one single job that you want to highlight to report users. Furthermore, it can display up to ten additional custom fields like job status fields in a tooltip to help report users to better understand what is going on in their batches.

JobNet Visual is the ideal foundation for performance optimization, since it easily lets you identify periods of overloading and critical paths within complex job nets of up to 30.000 data points.

Who Benefits from JobNet Visual

If you have ever been trying to manually visualize Data Warehouse loads using Gantt charts to find out, why the load took so long during the night or the last weekend, then this visual is for you. JobNet Visual has specifically been designed for ETL loads in Data Warehousing but can basically be used in any scenario where a large number of processes is being execute in a highly parallelized manner. Most common application scenarios for this visual are (but not limited to) understanding and optimization of:

• Patch processing of ETL jobs for Data Warehousing,
• Automation jobs in databases (like SQL Server Agents),
• Cloud automation processes in AWS or Azure,
• Operating system jobs like Cron or Windows Task scheduler,

That said, JobNet Visual can be used to visualize any processing context if the required data is being captured. For example, a hospital could track patients passing through their stations by scanning RFID wrist bands each time a patient arrives at the station and when it leaves the station after a certain job has been executed (e.g. MRT scan). The scanned timestamps can be used in a list together with a patient id and station id and visualized using JobNet Visual to display the efficiency of patient processing from the point of view of a station or single patient.

How to Use JobNet Visual

The visual requires a minimum of only four data fields to generate the job net in a Gantt-like fashion:

• ID: a unique identifier per job instance
• TYPE: a label representing the job type
• START: the date and time when the job started
• END: the date and time when the job ended

The visual currently assumes a granularity of minutes to build the chart. However, other granularities like seconds, hours and days are currently in implementation. In the licensed version the maximum of 30.000 data points currently allowed by Power BI are supported.

Additionally, the following optional fields are available:

• STATUS: indicating the job status using predefined values:
  • "C": Completed
  • "W": Warning
  • "E": Error
  Jobs with warnings or errors will be highlighted in the visual using a yellow or red line
• SUB-RUNTIME: up to four sub-runtimes in minutes to graphically divide a job into segments
• INFO FIELDS: up to ten additional information items to display in a tooltip when hovering over a job
• JOB COLOR: users can use their own colors for job types using hex color specifications
• DAY LABEL: the visual displays a timeline on to of the chart containing dates and hours. Sometimes users want to display additional information regarding an execution day, such as a weekend or holiday marker or any business-related milestone information. Data in this filed will be displayed next to the date label in the timeline

Please find more information on https://bi.popfinger.com/documentation/