Analyzing method execution: Using profiling views to analyze data

The Profiling Tool provides a number of different views and tables to help visualize the profiling data.

Before you begin

Launch or attach to an application.

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Here are the different views that you can use with the Profiling Tool:

  • UML2 Trace Interaction views
  • Execution Flow view
  • Execution Statistics view
  • Object Allocations view
  • Thread Statistics view

The profiling views assist you in performing the following types of analysis:

  • Analyzing program execution, which includes the following:
    1. identifying phases of program execution
    2. identifying active threads
    3. identifying resource intensive methods
    4. application threading characteristics
  • Analyzing method execution, which includes the following:
    1. identifying memory intensive classes
    2. viewing invocations and callers of a method
  • Determining performance problems, such as application scalability and performance bottlenecks.
  • Using UML2 Trace Interaction views
    The visualization of host and process interactions in the Sequence Diagram views of the Profiling Perspective helps in workload administration of distributed applications. The representation of time in these views helps in determining bottlenecks in application performance as well as network communication.
  • Filtering
    Filters are powerful tools that help focus the search for the type of data that you need. Most test and performance views provide filtering support on their content and have preconfigured filters turned on by default. Filters are especially useful and effective on data-intensive applications. They can be as simple as a few check boxes on commonly used filter criteria or as advanced as creating customer criteria on view content attributes.
  • Applying filters in profiling views
    The Profiling Tool provides a filtering mechanism that can be used to reduce the amount of data displayed in the different profiling views. Profiling filters are available in the UML2 Sequence Diagram views, the Memory Statistics view, and most tabs of the Execution Statistics view. By default specifically preconfigured Default Filter is turned on.
  • Analyzing program execution
    Periods of computation and periods of inactivity in the execution of a program can be easily identified using the Execution Flow view of the Profiling Tool.
  • Viewing invocations and callers of a method
    Using the Method Invocation view you can quickly cycle through the invocations of a selected method.
  • Analyzing method execution: Identifying memory-intensive classes
    The performance of a program can be greatly enhanced by identifying, and eliminating or modifying classes that take up large portions of a program's memory. You can use the Memory Statistics view to identify these classes.
  • Determining performance problems
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