Abstract: Workflows to be used in managing a computing environment are dynamically and programmatically created and/or activities are invoked, based on the current state of the environment. In creating a workflow, activities are conditionally included in the workflow based on the state of the environment. Different types of workflows may be created.

Abstract: Workflows to be used in managing a computing environment are dynamically and programmatically created and/or activities are invoked, based on the current state of the environment. In creating a workflow, activities are conditionally included in the workflow based on the state of the environment. Different types of workflows may be created.

Abstract: Workload reporting is provided in a distributed transaction processing environment having call trees in which a child application performs a child transaction on behalf of a parent application performing a parent transaction. When a parent application starts a transaction, it makes a call to a reporting agent, passing to it any parent correlator the parent application may have received from a calling application. The reporting agent returns to the parent application a child correlator, which the parent application passes to any child application it calls to perform child transactions. The child correlator contains end-to-end information classifying the parent transaction as well as a hop count indicating the depth of the child application in the call tree. The reporting agent uses the hop count to construct a topology in which commonly classified applications are grouped according to their depth in the call tree for better visualization of performance of individual applications.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for controlling the number of servers in an information handling system in which incoming work requests belonging to a first service class are placed in a queue for processing by one or more servers. The system also has units of work assigned to a second service class that acts as a donor of system resources. In accordance with the invention, a performance measure is defined for the first service class as well as for the second service class. Before adding servers to the first service class, there is determined not only the positive effect on the performance measure for the first service class, but also the negative effect on the performance measure for the second service class. Servers are added to the first service class only if the positive effect on the performance measure for the first service class outweighs the negative effect on the performance measure for the second service class.