Collecting Performance Data

The first stage of performance analysis is data collection. This chapter describes what is required for data collection, where the data is stored, how to collect data, and how to manage the data collection. For more information about the data itself, see Chapter 2, Performance Data.

Data collection is performed from the command line or from the Performance Analyzer tool.

Collecting data at the command line from the kernel requires a separate tool, er_kernel. See Chapter 9, Kernel Profiling for more information.

This chapter covers the following topics.

• Compiling and Linking Your Program

• Preparing Your Program for Data Collection and Analysis

• Limitations on Data Collection

• Where the Data Is Stored

• Estimating Storage Requirements

• Collecting Data

• Collecting Data Using the collect Command

• Collecting Data Using the dbx collector Subcommands

• Collecting Data From a Running Process With dbx on Oracle Solaris Platforms

• Collecting Data From Scripts

• Using collect With ppgsz

• Collecting Data From MPI Programs