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About the Performance Profiler landing page tab

Use the Performance Profiler landing page tab to obtain a detailed trace of performance information about the execution of activities, when condition rules, and data transforms executed by your requestor session. The Profiler traces every execution (in all Threads) of rules of these three types in all rulesets.

Note: You can also access this functionality using the Performance option on the Performance tool.

This tool provides more performance details than the Tracer tool. However, when enabled the Performance Profiler produces extensive output and requires substantial processing overhead. Disable this tool as soon as your data collection is complete.

On UNIX-based servers, only elapsed time statistics are available; CPU statistics are not available.

Profiling your requestor session

To profile execution of activities, data transforms, and when condition rules in your requestor session:

  1. Click Designer Studio> System > Performance > Performance Profiler.
  2. Click the State: Stopped icon to begin Profiler data collection in the background. The label and icon change to State: Running.
  3. Execute the activities or other rules to be profiled.
  4. Click State: Running to turn the Profiler off.
  5. The resulting window lists a Profiler file for each Thread that you used, identified by your Requestor ID and Thread Name. Select a CSV file for the Thread of interest to you and click the Download icon in the Actions column to send the file to your workstation.
  6. Choose Open or Save in the Windows dialog box.
  7. Open the file with Microsoft Excel to review and analyze the data.

Interpreting Profiler results

The Profiler CSV file includes the following data columns in each row:

Name

Description
Sequence Marks the beginning of each activity step or other row.
Interaction Sequence number of the interaction, as recorded in the Performance tool. Starts with 1 upon initial display of the login form.
Activity Handle of the activity, when condition, or data transform.
Calling activity Handle of the activity that called the current rule.
Step Step number. (For when condition rules, this value is always W. For data transforms, this value is always M.)
Method Name or When Result For activities, identifies the method in the step. For when condition rules, displays true or false. For data transforms, this value is blank.
Total CPU Time Total CPU time in seconds for this step. If this step contains a Call or Java instruction, the CPU time of called activities is included.
CPU Time Without Children Total CPU time in seconds for this step, excluding time for called processing. If this step contains a Call or Java instruction, the CPU time of called activities is not included.
Total Wall Time Elapsed time in seconds to complete this step. Values reflect the impact of other users on this server, waits for database operations and external events, and so on.
Wall Time Without Children Elapsed time (wall time) in seconds, for this step, exclusive of any called processing. (This value is useful for isolating the performance of Java steps that may perform extensive processing in addition to calling activities.)

Profiling all processing on a node

Caution: Do not enable system-wide profiling on a production system, as doing so may significantly impact performance. On a development system, remove or disable this setting as soon as the you capture the needed processing details.

To profile all processing on an entire Windows server node:

  1. Update the prconfig.xml file to add the setting:
    <env name="Initialization/ProfileApplication" value="true'/ >
  2. Stop and restart the server to implement the new setting.
  3. The system produces extensive output, saved in files in the temporary files directory.

Note: As an alternative to updating the prconfig.xml file, you can use Dynamic System Settings to configure your application. See Dynamic System Settings and the prconfix.xml file.

Profiling another requestor

Using the System Management Application, you can enable the Profiler for any requestor on any node:

  1. Select Designer Studio > System > Operations > System Management Application to start the System Management tool. You may be prompted for authentication credentials.
  2. On the System Management form, select a node.
  3. Select the Requestor Management menu.
  4. Select a radio button identifying a requestor you want to profile.
  5. After you have completed running the Profiler, access the server file system. Copy the output file from the ApplicationProfiler directory on the server. This directory is typically a subdirectory of the temporary files directory.


Related information

Tools — System

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