Stats Tools

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Stats Tools Release

    The Stats Tools is designed to help evaluate system performance by recording statistics related to various system activities such as queries, scripts, and transactions. This tool is activated by default and requires admin privileges for activation or upgrades. It is found under System Diagnostics > Stats, with modules for Slow Queries, Slow Scripts, and Slow Transactions, each accessing specific pattern tables.

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    Key Features

    • Activity Pattern Tables: The tool aggregates unique activities into pattern tables: sysquerypattern, sysscriptpattern, and systransactionpattern, providing timing analysis and identifiable details.
    • Filtering Logs: Logs can be filtered by application scope, allowing focused analysis of transactions originating from specific scopes.
    • Metrics: Each recorded execution pattern provides total and average metrics for performance evaluation, which are updated with each execution instance.
    • Transaction Types: Includes server-side and client-side transactions, with details on server load times and specific identifiers for HTTP requests and other transaction types.
    • Script and Query Types: Records script activities and query executions, identifying them by relevant attributes such as table names and executed statements.

    Key Outcomes

    By utilizing Stats Tools, ServiceNow customers can effectively monitor and analyze system performance, identify slow queries and scripts, and make informed decisions to optimize system efficiency. The tool's detailed metrics and logging capabilities ensure that customers can trace performance issues back to specific activities, enabling targeted troubleshooting and improvements.

    To aid in performance evaluation, the Stats Tools records statistics for system activities that affect performance such as the execution of queries, scripts, and transactions.

    Note:
    The Stats Tools plugin is activated by default. It requires the admin role to activate or upgrade, and it requires the com.snc.jrobin.
    Stats Tools adds modules under System Diagnostics > Stats, including Slow Queries, Slow Scripts, and Slow Transactions. Each module accesses a table of activity patterns [sys_query_pattern], [sys_script_pattern], [sys_transaction_pattern]. Each pattern table represents a collection of unique activities. Each collection is an aggregation of executions of that unique activity over all time. Each record provides basic timing analysis with example identifiable details of the activity.
    Note:
    To aid in debugging, you can filter most of these logs by application scope, limiting the transactions (for example, slow scripts or events) to only those transactions originating in specific scopes.

    Activity patterns are immediately recorded to a cache and are later persisted to their pattern table. If you flush server caches, then recorded activities that have not been persisted are cleared. The following are examples of pattern records.

    • Each time a query is executed that meets the recording and persistence threshold it is aggregated and stored as a query pattern record.
    • Each time a particular business rule is executed it aggregates to a script pattern record.
    • Each time a particular background job runs it aggregates into a unique transaction pattern record.
    • Each click of the New button on the Incidents list counts as a list type transaction pattern with specific form action.

    Metrics

    Metrics include total and average times of interest per unique execution pattern over the total execution count. Metrics are aggregated with each new instance of the unique activity and persisted to the pattern record.

    Metadata

    Example data from specific executions are included on each pattern to identify execution details.

    Characterizations of each activity type

    Table 1.
    Transactions

    Any transaction type includes server-side and related client-side transactions.

    Metrics include Total server load time, which aggregates the total server-side time excluding semaphore and session wait times. It also aggregates relevant server transaction times that are found on the syslog_transaction table.

    Transaction types:

    • An HTTP Request transaction is identified by a URL, transaction type, processor, form/list action, URL query (filters), and related table name.
    • Any other transaction is identified by its transaction URL/page/name, transaction type, and processor or thread name.
    Scripts

    Any script activity type includes scripts evaluated by GlideScopedEvaluator.

    Script Types:

    • A Jelly Script is identified by the sys_jelly_file table, jelly file path, line number, and script that was executed.
    • Any other script is identified by the table and sys_id.
    Queries

    Any query activity includes prepared statements executed by GlideDBI.

    Query Types:

    All queries are identified by MongoDB query or insert, update, or select statements, as well as other components of the statement like selected columns, where clause, unions, column sets, and limits.