Sampling Analysis Tools

Sun WorkShop provides a pair of tools that you use together to collect performance data on your application and analyze that data.

The Sampling Collector

The Sampling Collector is a graphical tool that is available from the Sun WorkShop debugger. When you execute your application, the Sampling Collector collects performance data from the kernel; this is called an experiment. The Sampling Collector writes the data it collects to a file that is called an experiment record. The experiment record includes resource usage data, program memory usage data, and execution profile data with or without called-function times.

The Sampling Analyzer

The Sampling Analyzer examines the experiment record written by the Sampling Collector and displays it graphically. Two additional utilities enable you to convert the experiment record into ASCII format (er_export) and to print the data to a file or printer (er_print).

The sampling analysis tools are described in Chapter 2, The Sampling Analysis Tools.