Application response time vs Transaction server time

Question

I cannot understand these two graphs I got On Application --> Monitoring --> Overview I can see that my App have response time up to 300ms but when I look into transactions I see that some transaction takes 500ms and more. So how can it be one transaction takes 500ms and overall response time always 300ms?

Answer 1

The key is to be mindful of the time window you are viewing. Towards the upper right corner is the picker for date and time window selected. As long as you didn't change it, typically it persists from view to view but it's still good to double-check.

Also, the information isn't presented the same.

For example, on the Application > (Application Name) > Monitoring > Overview there is a chart showing response times over the time window selected and the chart has a value posted above it that is an average for the time window. Also, each component of the chart (database, web external and JVM) are also averages. You can hover with a cursor over any time point in the chart to see the data for that moment.

As to the Transactions, how it appears depends greatly on the selections from the dropdown selectors. For example, the Transactions list could be the most consuming or the slowest response transactions. This information could differ greatly from the average, especially if there are a sufficient number of fast transactions.

Let us know if this information is helpful. If you need further clarification, I recommend creating a ticket through http://support.newrelic.com so we may look at the data more specifically.

Answer 2

Not only the time window you are viewing is relevant, as correctly stated by Jeanie. You have to take into consideration that what you are viewing is averages, and depending on the amount of invocations per minute, you could get low averages while still having individual transactions that take more than the average.

I was puzzled by this issue myself, so I published this queson and (after 4 days) answer: How is "app server" time related to "browser time" and "transaction time" in newrelic?