AppVision Version 5.0 is intended to minimize business risks associated with unplanned application outages and disruptions. Built for use with Java and.Net applications, AppVision gauges the behavior of applications through the use of lightweight components called "symbionts," which extend an application's runtime. The product can respond to system activities by, for example, forcing garbage collection in a Java application should memory exceed a predetermined benchmark, said Johnny Anderson, nVision CEO. Or, the system could prompt a restarting of an application. Rules-based algorithms are used to help a system recover from an event.

"In this version, we've added some additional symbionts to be able to look at other resources and capacity and performance information," Anderson said. Previously, the product offered just an error event management symbiont, which examined issues such as database lookup failures, SOAP failures, and application security.

New symbionts are featured to monitor JMX (Java Management Extensions) performance, memory usage, CPU utilization, thread usage, and thread-locking.

With the thread usage agent, AppVision makes sure an application is not using up too many threads. The thread-locking component ensures threads aren't being blocked.

In addition to the runtime information provided by symbionts, AppVision also features diagnostics to assess activities outside the application, such as whether a Web server or database is functioning. Symbiont-based information and diagnostics are correlated to get a view of an application anomaly.