Abnormal IB Publication Contract Volume

Abnormal IB Publication Contract Volume Alert

Alert ID: ib_pub_contract_volume Category: Integration Broker

What This Alert Detects

This alert detects when the volume of IB publication contracts (PSAPMSGPUBCON) is significantly higher than the rolling historical average. Publication contracts represent messages being delivered to subscribing nodes, so a spike here can indicate unexpected fan-out, retries, or a high-volume event.

A sudden volume spike may indicate repeated retries of failed contracts inflating the count, an upstream system publishing in a loop, or a legitimate but unusually large batch publication event.

How Baselining Works

psLens maintains a rolling history of up to 288 volume snapshots (approximately 24 hours at a 5-minute check interval). Each check cycle records the current publication contract count for the lookback window.

Once at least 6 baseline snapshots have accumulated, the alert begins comparing the current count against the historical average.

Severity Logic

Condition	Severity
Volume exceeds average by >= `thresholdPercent`	Warning
Volume exceeds average by >= `thresholdPercent x 2`	Critical
Historical average is 0 and current count is > 0	Warning

For example, with the default threshold of 50%:

Current count is 75% above average → Warning
Current count is 100%+ above average → Critical

Configuration

alerts:
  checks:
    ib_pub_contract_volume:
      enabled: true
      lookbackHours: 1         # Window for counting current contracts
      thresholdCount: 50       # Percentage increase to trigger Warning

Setting	Default	Description
`lookbackHours`	`1`	Hours to look back when counting current contract volume
`thresholdCount`	`50`	Percentage increase over historical average to trigger a Warning alert. Critical fires at 2x this value.

Alert Details

Each alert item includes:

Current publication contract count for the lookback window
Historical average count
Percentage increase above average
Number of baseline samples used
Link to the IB Monitor page

How to Respond

Navigate to the IB Monitor in psLens to see which publication contracts are generating the volume
Check for contracts in Error status (see IB Publication Contract Errors alert)
Review whether retries are inflating the count. Repeated errors create new contract instances.
Consider using the Daily IB Volume report to compare against historical patterns

Tables Queried

Table	Description
PSAPMSGPUBCON	IB publication contract records