Jinsight Release Notes

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Jinsight Release Notes

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Initial Release · Release History · Installed Files · Known Problems and Limitations · Authors

Initial Release of Jinsight 2.1 (Jinsight for Java 2)

This release provides Jinsight tracing and visualization function in IBM Java 2 environments on AIX, Windows, and OS/390.

Jinsight2.1 is independent of Jinsight2.0. Jinsight2.1 is for IBM Java 2 environments, and provides instrumentation via a profiling agent which uses the Java 2 JVMPI interface. Jinsight2.0 is for IBM Java 1.1.8 environments, and provided instrumentation as entire replacement JVMs, with instrumented java_g and java programs. Thus the setup for making traces with Jinsight2.1 has changed.

Most of the Jinsight2.0 tracing functions, such as start/stop tracing methods, dump population, and dump references are available in Jinsight2.1. However, some other tracing features are not currently implemented. If you were a user of Jinsight2.0, and have now moved to an IBM Java 2 environment, please see the sections on functionality differences and known problems and limitations before you use Jinsight 2.1.

You must use the Jinsight2.1 visualizer to visualize Jinsight2.1 traces. The Jinsight2.1 visualizer also visualizes traces in earlier Jinsight formats. Also, much of the documentation for Jinsight2.1 incorporates parts of the existing Jinsight2.0 documentation.

Recent Release History

July 2001: Release of Jinsight 2.1 (Jinsight for Java 2) on IBM alphaWorks. This release provided Jinsight tracing function in Java 2 environments on AIX, Windows, and OS/390. There were significant changes in the setup for making traces with Jinsight2.1. Also, visualizer package Jinsight2.1-vis replaced package Jinsight2.0-vis. All the Jinsight2.1 packages contain the latest visualizer and documentation. The Jinsight2.1 visualizer reads all Jinsight trace formats.

April 2001: Pre-release of Jinsight 2.1 "beta" in AIX and Windows environments.

May 2001: Replaced the Jinsight 2.0 OS/390 info package, to provide corrections to supplemental documentation about installation procedures for using Jinsight2.0 with WebSphere 3.02 on OS/390.

Feb 2001: Release of Jinsight 2.0 on IBM alphaWorks. This release presented a greatly revised visualizer, providing expanded capabilities for subsetting and analyzing trace data, as well as some new views requested by our users. The release also updated AIX JDK instrumentation to the JDK1.1.8 level, with instrumentation now for the java program rather than the java_g program. The release also updated the IBM Windows JDK1.1.8 java_g instrumentation to fix some bugs.

Installed Files for Jinsight 2.1

The distribution files

  AIX:     jinsight2.1-aix-java2.tar.Z   (download to AIX)
  Windows: jinsight2.1-ibm-win-java2.zip (download to PC)
  OS/390:  jinsight2.1-os390-java2.zip   (download to PC)

unzip/untar into a directory jinsight2.1 with:

  documentation:   
    docs/*.htm, images           -- start with docs/index.htm  
  visualizer:   
    jinsight.jar                 -- Jinsight 2.1 visualizer, required for 2.1 traces,
                                     reads all Jinsight trace formats   
    jinsight(.bat)               -- sample command file to visualize a trace
    traces/*.trc                 -- sample traces to visualize
  trace control servlet HTML interface:   
    jintrace.htm                 -- for controlling tracing in WebSphere 3.5  
  trace instrumentation and examples:
    *jinsightPA.*                -- profiling agent for IBM Java 2 environments
    jinsight_trace(.bat)         -- sample command file to make a trace
    jintrace.jar                 -- trace control servlet for WebSphere 3.5
    apiSample21*.*               -- sample Java program to verify tracing using API
    loopTest.*                   -- sample Java program to try Jinsight trace cmds

For OS/390, the above trace instrumentation and examples are found in a tar file jinsight2.1-os390-java2.tar. FTP this tar file in binary to your OS/390 system and untar it there, creating a tracing directory jinsight2.1 on the OS/390.

Known Problems and Limitations

These are the Java 2 environments that we recommend for running the tracing profiling agent and the visualizer:

  Windows:  IBM Java 1.3 Runtime Environment, available at
        http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java Download Developer Kits 
  AIX:      IBM Java 1.2.2 Runtime Environment, available at
        http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java Download Developer Kits 
  OS/390:   IBM OS/390 Java 1.3 Runtime Environment, available at 
        http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java Download Developer Kits,
        IBM build hm130-20010424

We have not used the tracing profiling agent and the visualizer in other Java 2 environments.

There are some differences with the Jinsight2.0 implementation. Some of them include

The API function calls have changed.
The start and stop functions for trace object population are not implemented.
On AIX, the Ctrl-\ console interface for trace control commands does not work.
On the 390, the console interface produces a java dump before being entered.

For more details, please see the section on functionality differences, as well as the following three links to tracing options available in Jinsight2.1, and where they differ from Jinsight2.0.

  for Windows:  Tracing Commands and Options for Jinsight2.1 on Windows 
  for OS390:    Tracing Commands and Options for Jinsight2.1 on OS/390 
  for AIX:      Tracing Commands and Options for Jinsight2.1 on AIX

Other problems and limitations from the past include:

There is currently a limit of 32 slices active in a single Jinsight session
Jinsight views may stop accepting keyboard input in some cases. Click on either of the zoom buttons at the bottom of the view to restore the keyboard focus.
Reference Pattern: a long blue arrow to another occurrence disappears when you scroll far enough.
Execution Pattern: pattern extraction may fail for very deep recursion patterns.
Histogram: on Windows '95 only, some lines between objects or methods are drawn incorrectly due to a drawing problem in AWT. (The problem occurs in such a way that you will easily be able to see that the lines aren't being drawn properly).

Authors

Jinsight was developed at IBM Research by:

Wim De Pauw
Olivier Gruber
Erik Jensen
Ravi Konuru
Fereydoun Maali
Nick Mitchell
Martin Robillard
Gary Sevitsky
Harini Srinivasan
John Vlissides
Jeaha Yang

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