Jinsight Reference Manual

Object Histogram View

Purpose · Elements · Interpretation · Tracing Considerations

Execution View

Purpose

Elements

Main View

Class names appear in a scrollable pane along the left edge. Each rectangle in the view represents a method of the class to its left.  A rectangle's color will vary according to a black-to-blue-to-red color spectrum.  Along the top of the display appears an optional color legend, showing the range of color values and the meaning of the color. The meaning of the color depends on the current choice in the Method Colors menu. Colors on the black end of the spectrum generally denote lower values, with black meaning zero, while colors on the red end denote higher values.  Class names appear in color as well, their color reflecting the cumulative value for all the methods of a class.

To create greater differentiation among colors, use the color scale operations in the Options menu (see below).

Menus

• Popup menus. Right-clicking on a method produces a popup menu that lets you see the callers of a method, or the methods it calls.  Right-clicking on a class name lets you determine the same information for every method of the class at once.

Calling relationship lines are green and are labeled with the number of calls that the line represents.  An arrowhead shows the direction of the relationship.  Circular calling relationships and circular references are shown as small oval lines leaving and re-entering the same method.  Flying over a line with the mouse pointer shows the relationship information in the status line at the bottom of the view. Finally, the calling relationship lines to/from a single method can be restricted to show just the "top 5" -- the 5 lines representing the highest frequency of calls.

To remove all relationship lines, select Clear Lines from the Options menu, or right-click in an empty area of the view.
 

• Options menu.  Pan to Selection centers the current selection (if any) in the view.  Show Legend is a toggle to show or hide the color legend at the top of the view.  Increase Color Scale and Decrease Color Scale let you vary the mapping of colors to values.  Increase Color Scale increases the range of values, while Decrease Color Scale decreases the range.  The current values appear in the window's title bar.  Recalibrate Colors remaps the colors so that red corresponds to the highest value encountered thus far in the execution.

  Sort choices rearrange the rows in the histogram according to different sort criteria.  Sort Class Names Now sorts the rows alphabetically, while Sort Class Colors Now sorts them by color, from red to black. 

  Clear Lines removes from the view all lines showing calling, relationships among the methods. Clear Selection deselects any classes, methods, or other entities previously selected here or elsewhere in the workspace.

  Short Names strips leading qualifiers from all class names to save space and reduce clutter, at the risk of name ambiguity. Font Scaling is a toggle that allows/disallows scaling of the character data font size as the view is zoomed in and out.


 
• Classes menu. This menu controls what classes (rows) appear in the Method Histogram. Display all classes causes all the classes in the workspace to appear in the view. Display all classes in slice presents the set of slices you can choose from to limit the view to only the classes in that slice. Display selected classes (now) limits the view to only classes currently selected; the menu variation Display selected classes (live) causes the view to be updated as the set of selected classes changes.

 
• Selected menu. These options are active only when current selection(s) exist. Drill Down from Selected Items lets you open a view that is restricted to the current selections. Create a New Slice will create one or more new slices from the current selections. You can create either a single slice From Selected Items or one slice For Each Selected Item. From Selected Items or one slice For Each Selected Item. Choosing Limit an Existing Slice presents the set of execution slices you can choose to limit to Selected Items.

 
• Help menu. Selecting Help in a view attempts to use your browser to display the Reference Manual documentation for that view. The browser program location is specified in the environment variable JINSIGHT_BROWSER, in the shell script named jinsight that invokes the visualizer.

 
• Method Colors menu. Base Time calculates the time spent in a method (but not its callees), and colors the corresponding method rectangle accordingly.  Cumulative Time colors each rectangle according to the total elapsed time spent in each method, including time spent in methods these methods call.  See the section on time measurements for a more detailed discussion of these computations.

  Number of Calls calculates the total number of invocations of each method.

  Color by Slice differentiates the classes and methods according to the color assigned to each defined slice. Dark gray is the default color for classes and methods that are in the workspace base slice but not in any other slice. Classes completely outside of the workspace base filtering are rendered in an almost invisible beige color.
   

Bottom Panel

The status line displays specific information about the class or method directly underneath the mouse pointer.  This information includes:
 
• for classes:  the class name, number of methods, base and cumulative times for all methods, and total number of calls on all methods.

 
• for methods:  the class and method name, base and cumulative time, and total number of calls.

 

See also Using Slices in the Histogram View for a more detailed discussion of how this view may be used with slices and workspaces.

Interpretation

Tuning

Methods appearing in red (following color recalibration in base and cumulative time modes) may be candidates for optimization, since they consume the most time.

Tracing Considerations

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