About the Profiler tool

Use the Profiler tool to obtain a detailed trace of performance information about the execution of activities, when condition rules, and model rules executed by your requestor session. The Profiler traces every execution (in all Threads) of rules of these three types in all RuleSets.

Don't confuse this tool with the Application Profile wizard — an unrelated tool — or with an operator profile.

This tool provides more performance details than the Tracer tool or the Performance tool. However, when enabled this tool 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.

To profile your requestor session

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

1. Select Run > Performance.
2. Click the Start Profiler link to begin profiler data collection in the background. The link name changes to Stop Profiler.
3. Execute the activities or other rules to be profiled.
4. If necessary, select Run > Performance again. Click the Stop Profiler link.
5. The resulting window lists a Profiler file for each Thread that you used, identified by your Requestor ID and Thread Name. Select a file for the Thread of interest to you. Click  Download or Display Data to send the file to your workstation.
6. Choose  Open   or  Save   in the Windows dialog box. The file type is CSV, for comma-separated values.
7. Open the CSV 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 model rule.
Calling activity	Handle of the activity that called the current rule.
Step	Step number. (For when condition rules, this value is always W. For model rules, 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 models, 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

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.

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.

Profiling another requestor

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

1. Select Tools > 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. Click  Start Profiling  .
6. When you complete the operations you want to profile, click  Stop Profiling  .
7. 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.

Notes

Requestor-level CPU statistics on Windows servers are produced by the pr3native.dll library, which implements the Java Native Interface. If you want to disable this feature, update the prconfig.xml file setting for the usenativelibrary setting:

<env name="Initialization/usenativelibrary" value="false" />

Then redeploy or restart the server, as appropriate.

Application Profile, Java Native Interface, profile, prconfig.xml file, temporary files

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