TOP processing

TOP processing is useful to identify the report entries that might indicate a problem application.

Signs of a problem can be a long elapsed or processing time, a high number of suspensions, commits per update, or buffer updates. Identifying these entries is especially useful when your report covers many users or a long period so that it is not immediately clear which applications are causing performance problems.

To identify report entries with a high value in certain fields, you can produce an Accounting report or trace with TOP lists. TOP lists are index-like reports at the end of a report or trace. They point out the most interesting entries in the report or trace. You can generate such lists by using the TOP subcommand option.

Note: Entries with 0 or undetermined values are not shown. Moreover, if your input data contains only 0 or undetermined values for the TOP fields requested, a TOP list is not generated.

You can also filter a report or trace so that only the main resource consumers are shown, ordered by descending resource value. To obtain a filtered report or trace, specify the TOP subcommand option with the ONLY keyword.

The shown resource values are average values. To obtain total values, which means, the main resource consumers calculated by taking into account how often they consumed resources, specify the TOP subcommand option with the TOTAL keyword. TOTAL only applies to reports. If you specify it with a trace, it is ignored.