Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Application performance management


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. J04n(talk page) 01:06, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Application performance management

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

I tried, but failed to rewrite this article to eliminate the reliance on Gartner models, the didactic and repetitive language, the duplication, the use of proprietary capitalized terminology for common concepts, and the duplicate linking to everything with a possible connection. I failed, because the essential sources on which the document rests are proprietary and limited to Gartner customers. I do not consider this effectual publication, as it provides the general reader to now to verify anything in the article. It is of use only to the company's customers,and therefore belongs on the company's website. I do not like to admit failure in rewriting jargon, and I would have no objection if anyone would undertake to rewrite the article from publicly accessible sources. (There's a related article, Business transaction management, but since it has public sources I think I can probably fix it)  DGG ( talk ) 04:35, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment. I would like to say delete because this seems typical of the consultancy-fuelled nonsense and BS that blights the IT industry these days, but GBooks does have at least three books about Application performance management, so it does appear to be a topic that has enough coverage to have an article. Shame. --Michig (talk) 07:13, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
 *  Delete . Part of the Augean stables of IT-cruft.  If you can turn text like:  Application performance management is related to end-user experience management and real user management in that measuring the experience of real users in the use of an application in production is considered by many to be the most valid method of assessing the performance of an application. Maximum productivity can be achieved more efficiently through event correlation, system automation and predictive analysis which is now all part of APM.....  Dependency injection software development frameworks on JEE instrument an application to provide performance metrics automatically. For example, Spring-based JEE applications support management protocols to provide observed issues in application operation to a performance management tool/dashboard. SpringSource acquired APM-player Hyperic in 2009 to combine application development, automatic application instrumentation, and application performance management. Aspect Oriented Programming on JEE platforms enables automatic performance monitoring without instrumentation of the application. PushToTest TestMaker is an open source load testing solution that integrates with Glassbox, an open source application performance monitoring and troubleshooter application.   into intelligible English, my hat's off to you: until that time, it's "(c)ontent that, while apparently intended to mean something, is so confused that no reasonable person can be expected to make any sense of it": patent nonsense, in our technical sense. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 15:03, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
 * You're a lawyer and legal jargon can be even more turgid and obscure. Myself, I have no difficulty in understanding what is meant by the paragraph you quote. Warden (talk) 18:23, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Right, and I have written articles on some technical legal subjects, and in the process attempt to explain their significance and why they matter. What I won't do is a text dump of undigested legal jargon into an article. When every intelligible phrase in the text seems to be shaped around the message about how productive whatever-this-is will make you and how it will help you make money, as is the case here, it doesn't help. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 22:02, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Neutral. The rewrite has taken care of the glaring problems of the unintelligible original here.  I suppose I will never get away from the suspicion that 'subjects' like this are much more than sales pitches for IT consulting firms.  I probably can't be convinced that these subjects don't have long term, historic legs, and I think they have problems with undue weight given to IT minutiæ given the bias caused by the fact that whatever else unites us, it's computers.  If you aren't interested in using computers, you probably won't be editing Wikipedia.  - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 05:49, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. 15:07, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Management-related deletion discussions. 15:09, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Technology-related deletion discussions. Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 15:07, 20 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep The topic is clearly notable as may be seen from the search links above where numerous sources such as A survey of J2EE application performance management systems can be readily found. If some of these sources such as Gartner's papers require payment then this is very normal.  My impression is that DGG has been spoilt by his work as an academic librarian.  Most lay folk are required to pay prohibitive fees to access academic journals but, nevertheless, we consider these to be satisfactory sources.  If the current sources are behind a paywall which he cannot get past for free then he is just experiencing the normal state of affairs for most of our readership.  As for the jargon issue, this is just a matter of ordinary editing, not deletion.  And prejudice against IT topics is blatant WP:IDONTLIKEIT, of course. Warden (talk) 18:23, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment. Paywalled sources, by definition, are of limited circulation and probably of limited interest, and industry analysts like Gartner itself are sources with small readerships devoted to providing deep coverage of a specific industry.  Industry analysts can't turn a subject into the sort of thing you'd expect to find as a standalone entry in an encyclopedia.  I've always acknowledged, and make no apology for, my "bias" against unreadable gibberish whose purpose is to sell something.  That's what we have here. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 21:11, 20 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment - Tried to read... Feeling very sleepy... No opinion. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Carrite (talk) 20:01, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment Paywalled sources are perfectly acceptable at WP, and the items involved can be requested through any library & from many WPedians--ideally, the person adding them to the article should have seen them, and therefore has access. . Not using them would destroy our coverage of scientific topics, and a good deal of social science. I totally disagree with Smerdis that payrolled sources are " of limited circulation and probably of limited interest" Every significant journal in chemistry is a payrolled source; most of mathematics and biology also. There is a trend  (open access to make new ones supported by government agencies available after 6 months, but this does not apply to anything before such open accessed policies came into effect, or to non-government supported research. And I think Smerdis is wrong about this sort of industry report also: some--such as many Gartner reports--are of fairly broad interest, which is why the publisher is able to restrict access to them.     As I understand it, these Gartner sources are another matter entirely from ordinary pay-walled sources; they are in general available to their customers only. I am fairly sure they are not   available in any public or university library at all; they are made available only to individuals, at a price of several hundred dollars each, under terms that the item may not be shared with anyone else. If a second person wants to read it, a second copy must be purchased or licensed.    These are not checkable: For example, there is no way of knowing whether or not the entire article is a copyvio from them. DGG ( talk ) 22:24, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
 * comment 2 I usually disagree with Smerdis about jargon also. There have been many AfDs where he's quoted a paragraph of ordinary business jargon and used it to condemn an article. I agree with him we should not permit such language in WP, and that it is not encyclopedic, but most of it can be rewritten if it is worth the trouble. I have sometimes done so directly in response to his challenges. For this particular article,he's right. I could not figure out how to rewrite it. That the topic may be notable is irrelevant--we're not judging whether an article on the topic should be in WP, but whether this article should be in WP: this is a discussion about Articles For Deletion, not Topics For Inclusion. Jargon like this, if nobody is prepared o rewrite it, should essentially be treated like an article entirely copyvio: there's an essay by Man in Black that summarizes the argument: Blow it up and start over.  DGG ( talk ) 22:24, 21 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment I blew up the article and rewrote it. Behind all the MBA jargon was spam advocating a particular approach to APM. I removed the spam, tried to rebalance the undue weight, and attempted to simplify the language. Update: Added some non Gartner references, including a freely available report that verifies Gartner's five dimensions. --Mark viking (talk) 00:20, 22 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep - APM is entering into a period of intense competition of technology and strategy with a multiplicity of vendors and viewpoints. While the nomenclature used within its space has five distinct dimensions that elucidate its meaning, the very acronym of APM is in question: Application Performance ... Monitoring vs. Management.


 * It's strange to think that we would not normally use monitoring and management synonymously, but when used in the APM vernacular they seem to be interchangeable. This may be a visceral response, but I see the APM idiom converging on itself and becoming a matter of expectations vs. aspirations.


 * Application Performance Monitoring is the expectation of the tool sets themselves and how to implement them. Gartner provides five dimensions that describe these technologies which are not meant to be so "prescriptive" as much as they are "descriptive".


 * Application Performance Management is the aspiration of what we want the APM space to become. It is the umbrella over the other disciplines (e.g. enterprise monitoring, performance analysis, system modeling, and capacity planning).


 * To illustrate this concept consider looking at a blueprint of the high-level elements to include when implementing an APM solution. Each element goes deep as a broad category, and each category encompasses specific monitoring tools that support the end-user-experience (EUE). The EUE is at the heart of it all, and has become the focal point that allows us to make the connection to the business and speak to them in a language they can appreciate. Understandably, the technology overlap across the elements can leave even the savviest IT leader perplexed about APM and what it means.


 * No matter where you believe APM's heritage has come from (e.g. BSM, BTM, NPM, etc.), monitoring and management will both have their roles to play in the APM journey. APM is the translation of IT metrics into business meaning (value). How that is actually accomplished however, is another story.
 * Comment - I updated the article providing context for the APM model and each of the dimension's relative priority. Articulating terms most commonly used in the APM nomenclature, distilling 15 pages of technical descriptions into a concise summary.LarryDragich (talk) 13:35, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I’ve been involved in APM specifically for the last 7 years or so and have written numerous articles on the topic and have spoken at many IT engagements to help people understand the differentiators. I agree that we should remove the commercial selling taking out vendor references and so on.  Keep the 5 dimensions and their relative priority on what they mean…and how to manage the integration touch points between them.  — LarryDragich (talk) 20:07, 22 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep As shown in the rewritten article, there are multiple reliable sources for this topic: Gartner (counted as a single source), the Virtualization Review article, a peer reviewed paper from NOMS, and a Network World article. The rewrite has removed the worst of the impenetrable jargon and advertising spam and has added some non-Gartner sources for better balance. While not perfect, the remaining problems with the prose seem surmountable. Multiple reliable sources show the topic is notable according to WP:GNG and the remaining article problems are surmountable, per WP:SURMOUNTABLE; both suggest that this article be kept. --Mark viking (talk) 21:26, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
 * comment on the rewritten article Yes, it certainly is an improvement in clarity. There's a good deal of further improvement needed. 1 In many of the paragraphs, the content is evaluation, not description, and this sort of content needs specific sources. 2 There is remaining writing in a tutorial style, which is not encyclopedic , e.g. "A minimal take away here would be to ensure that you have up/down monitoring in place for all nodes/servers within the environment." Almost every word here is wrong. In particular, we normally try to avoid the second person. 3 Too much of the writing still uses jargon and business style phrasing and wordiness., e.g. "... this will become a critical component to build on when working on event correlation to help implement an overall runtime architecture solution." should be "is essential for event correlation"  And, what  is "deep=-dive component management? Is there an English equivalent?  Some phrases seem to have non0standard meanings: "to help prioritize Gartner’s APM Model" is presumably meant to say to use the model to set priorities for the tasks, but what it says is to make their model a priority among models one might use 4 The slide, which I suspect from its style is a slightly redrawn Gartner slide, does not contribute understanding. Flow charts are sometimes needed in articles, but a graphic comprised of paragraphs of texts is inferior to plain text; WP is not Powerpoint.   5 The article seems to assume that this is something distinctive. Analysis of the user experience is a standard technique going back 60 years, and not distinctive to Gartner -- I thing that's what meant here by "Top Down."  "Bottom up," which I think means measuring the performance of the low-level components, is even older.    As far as I can tell, this vitiates the entire concept of the article & the concept; it remains essentially their proprietary concept for things perfectly usual in the industry--they're basically renaming everything so people think they have something worth purchasing. That 5th dimension really shows it: they're saying that having the data, it is necessary to report it consistently. This is worth dignifying as a dimension of a named model?
 * I think this needs another round of explosion. @Larry: Are you wiling to do it? Do you think that immersed in the industry as you are, you still have the ability to write plainly? I note you did indeed rewrite it to include outside sources, most of them are your own work. I appreciate your honesty in using your real name, but this is not considered acceptable here. To cite yourself is a conflict of interest. Speaking of COI, has anyone from other companies or independent analysts or the academic world commented on whether they think the model is useful?  DGG ( talk ) 03:52, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
 * How do we handle subjects where every competent writer has a COI?  DGG ( talk ) 03:52, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
 * (raises hand) Wait! I know! If the only people who know enough about a subject are people using it to sell something (or their competition with a different TLA), it isn't ready for a standalone article in an encylopedia yet. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 04:00, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I knew I could count on you! (awards an A)  DGG ( talk ) 04:48, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I had cut the article down quite to quite a short exposition, but then it was expanded again--at least without the spam this time. I'll let others decide if my efforts were those of a competent editor, but I do claim that I have no COI in this topic. --Mark viking (talk) 05:49, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
 * @DGC – Yes, I’m willing to rewrite it and I’ll start with the examples you cited. I do receive positive feedback quite frequently from my peers in companies across the globe and from independent analysts within the industry.  I haven’t received any feedback from the academic world until this week.  As far as a COI, I’m not trying to sell anything here, other than the idea that an APM solution can be simplified, understood, and implemented.   I work in the field of IT using multiple APM products, not selling them.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by LarryDragich (talk • contribs) 11:13, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I would be willing to withdraw the AfD, and let you and Mark try to do it, but I cannot, because there are other delete comments.. The alternative is to start over. Sometimes starting over is the best way of dealing with the residual effects of initial unsatisfactory  wording. Even if the article is deleted, that doesn't mean we don't want an article on the subject. I'd be very glad indeed if we had some competent skilled writers in this subject area who can  explain what is actually notable and distinctive, and deal with the need to differentiate the overlapping subjects-- with consideration for the advantages of combining into comprehensive articles. Given that the sort of jargon initially present exists in the RW,  it is reasonable that people will come here with the hope of finding out what the topic is actually about. I'd like to actually learn myself, instead of having to guess.    DGG ( talk ) 05:30, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment - I condesed the article quite a bit and added independent references. Looking for any feed back the team might have.LarryDragich (talk) 16:53, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.