System and method for concurrent recording and displaying of system performance data

Claims

We claim:

1. A process implemented by a computer system, having at least one host, a processor, memory, a display, and user controls, for concurrently displaying multiple views of a statistic to analyze the performance of said computer system, comprising the computer system implemented steps of:

receiving by said processor an event-causing command from said user controls;

in response to receiving said event-causing command, generating by said processor an event on said host that produces said statistic;

receiving by said processor at least a first sampling interval command and a second sampling interval command from said user controls;

capturing by said processor first samples of said statistic at .said first sampling interval;

concurrently capturing by said processor second samples of said statistic at said second sampling interval; and

concurrently displaying by said processor said captured first and second samples on said display, thereby permitting a comparison of said first samples with said second samples of said statistic.

2. The process according to claim 1 further comprising the step of recording by a recording subsystem said captured first and second samples in said memory concurrently with said displaying of said captured first and second samples.

3. The process according to claim 1 wherein said first and second samples are displayed by said processor in a single console on said display.

4. The process according to claim 3 further comprising the step of displaying by said processor said first samples in a first instrument within said console and displaying said second samples in a second instrument within said console.

5. The process according to claim 4 further comprising the step of displaying by said processor a plurality of statistics in said first instrument, each of said statistics being sampled at said first sampling interval.

6. The process according to claim 1 further comprising displaying by said processor multiple consoles comprising captured statistics of differing sampling intervals.

7. The process according to claim 1 wherein said displaying step comprises the step of displaying by said processor said first and second samples according to a predefined presentation style.

8. The process according to claim 7 further comprising the steps of:

receiving by said processor a modify-representation command form said user controls; and

dynamically changing said presentation style by said processor while said first and second samples are being displayed.

9. The process according to claim 1 wherein said first and second samples are displayed by said processor on said display in a time graph.

10. The process according to claim 9 further comprising the steps of:

receiving by said processor a scrolling command from said user controls; and

scrolling said time graph backward or forward by said processor on said display.

11. The process according to claim 9 further comprising the step of dynamically switching said time graph to a state graph.

12. The process according to claim 9 wherein each of said first or second samples are superimposed one on another when displayed on said time graph by said processor as specified by said user controls of said computer system.

13. The process according to claim 1 wherein said first and second samples are displayed said processor on said display at the same time other live data is being displayed and recorded on said display.

14. The process according to claim 1 wherein said first and second samples are displayed concurrently by said processor in a plurality of instruments on said display at variable speeds.

15. The process according to claim 1 further comprising the step of erasing a part of said first or second samples by said processor as specified by said user controls of said computer system.

16. The process according to claim 1 wherein each of said first and second samples are displayed using differing styles by said processor as specified by said user controls of said computer system.

17. The process according to claim 1 wherein said first and second samples are displayed as a state graph by said processor as specified by said user controls of said computer system.

18. A computer system for concurrently displaying multiple views of a statistic to analyze the performance of said computer system, comprising:

a processor;

at least one host;

user controls for receiving a plurality of commands;

means for generating by said processor an event on said host that produces said statistic in response to an event-causing command from said user controls;

means for capturing by said processor first samples of said statistic at a first sampling interval;

means for concurrently capturing by said processor second samples of said statistic at a second sampling interval; and

a display for concurrently displaying said first samples and said second samples, thereby permitting a comparison of said first samples with said second samples for said statistic.

19. The computer system according to claim 18 wherein said means for generating by said processor an event on said host comprises a network send/receive interface.

20. The computer system according to claim 18 wherein said display comprises a console having an instrument for displaying a plurality of statistics.

21. The computer system according to claim 20 wherein said console comprises multiple instruments for displaying captured samples of differing sampling intervals.

22. The computer system according to claim 21 wherein each of said plurality of statistics are displayed using differing graphical styles on said display by said computer system.

23. The computer system according to claim 18 wherein said processor displays said first and second samples at the same time other live data is being displayed and recorded on said display.

24. The computer system according to claim 18 wherein said first and second samples are displayed by said processor as a time graph.

25. The computer system according to claim 24 further comprising means for dynamically switching said time graph to a state graph.

26. The computer system according to claim 24 wherein each of said first or second samples are superimposed one on another by said processor when displayed on said time graph.

27. The computer system according to claim 18 further comprising means for scrolling said time graph backward or forward on said display.

28. The computer system according to claim 18 wherein said first or second samples are displayed by said processor concurrently in a plurality of instrument on said display.

29. The computer system according to claim 18 further comprising means for erasing a part of said first and second samples as specified by said user controls to said computer system.

30. The computer system according to claim 18 further comprising a recording subsystem for concurrently recording said first and second samples in a memory device when said first and second samples are being displayed on said display by said processor.

31. A process implemented by a computer system having at least one host, a display, processor, memory and user controls, for concurrently displaying multiple views of a first and second statistic to enable correlation between said first and second statistics, comprising the system implemented steps of:

receiving by said processor at least a first and second event-causing command from said user controls;

in response to receiving said first event-causing command, generating by said processor a first event on said at least one host that produces said first statistic;

in response to receiving said second event-causing command, generating by said processor a second event of said at least one host that produces said second statistic;

receiving by said processor at least a first sampling interval command and a second sampling interval command from said user controls;

capturing first samples by said processor of said first statistic at a first sampling interval;

concurrently capturing by said processor second samples of said second statistic at a second sampling interval; and

concurrently displaying by said processor said first samples and said second samples on said display, thereby enabling correlation between said first and second statistic.

32. The process according to claim 31 further comprising the step of recording by a recording subsystem said captured first and second samples concurrently with said displaying of said captured first and second samples.

33. The process according to claim 32 further comprising the steps of capturing, displaying, and recording by said processor a third statistic on said display while said first and second samples are being recorded.

34. The process according to claim 31 further comprising the steps of capturing and displaying a third statistic by said processor on said display while said first and second samples are being displayed on said display.

35. The process according to claim 31 further comprising the step of deleting said first statistic while said second statistic is being captured as specified by said user controls.

36. The process according to claim 31 further comprising the step of displaying multiple instruments within a console on said display, wherein each of said instruments comprises samples from a plurality of statistics.

37. The process according to claim 31 wherein said first event is generated by said processor from a first host and said second even is generated from a second host of said computer system.

38. The process according to claim 31 wherein said first sampling interval is substantially equal to said second sampling interval.

39. A computer system for concurrently displaying multiple views of a first and second statistic, comprising:

processor;

user controls for transmitting a plurality of commands to said processor;

means for generating by said processor said first statistic in response to a first generating command by said user controls;

means for generating by said processor said second statistic in response to a second generating command by said user controls;

in response to a first sampling-interval command by said user controls, means for capturing by said processor first samples of said first statistic at a first sampling interval;

in response to a second sampling-interval command by said user controls, means for second samples of said second statistic at a second sampling interval; and

a display for concurrently displaying said first samples and said second samples, thereby enabling correlation between said first and second statistics.

40. The computer system according to claim 39 wherein said means for generating by said processor said first statistic comprises means for causing an event on a first host.

41. The computer system according to claim 39 wherein said means for generating by said processor said second statistic comprises means for causing an event on a second host.

A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED PATENT APPLICATIONS

Ser. No. 07/713,484, filed Jun. 10, 1991 now abandoned for REAL TIME SYSTEM RESOURCE MONITOR FOR DATA PROCESSING SYSTEM, currently co-pending, and assigned to the same assignee as the present invention and hereby incorporated by reference.

Ser. No. 07/713,471, filed Jun. 10, 1991 now abandoned for REAL TIME SYSTEM RESOURCE MONITOR FOR DATA PROCESSING SYSTEM WITH SUPPORT FOR DYNAMIC VARIABLE UPDATE AND AUTOMATIC BOUNDING, currently co-pending, and assigned to the same assignee as the present invention and hereby incorporated by reference.

Ser. No. 07/713,486, filed Jun. 10, 1991 now abandoned for REAL TIME INTERNAL RESOURCE MONITOR FOR DATA PROCESSING SYSTEM, currently co-ending, and assigned to the same assignee as the present invention and hereby incorporated by reference.

Ser. No. 07/965,982, having internal docket number AT9-92-096, filed Oct. 23, 1992 for SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MAINTAINING PERFORMANCE DATA IN A DATA PROCESSING SYSTEM, currently co-pending, and assigned to the same assignee as the present invention, which is hereby incorporated by reference.

Ser. No. 07/965,959, having internal docket number AT9-92-101, filed Oct. 23, 1992 now abandoned for SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DISPLAYING SYSTEM PERFORMANCE DATA, currently co-pending, and assigned to the same assignee as the present invention, which is hereby incorporated by reference.

Ser. No. 07/965,960, having internal docket number AT9-92-103, filed Oct. 23, 1992 for SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR REAL TIME VARIABLE GRANULARITY RECORDING OF SYSTEM PERFORMANCE DATA, currently co-pending, and assigned to the same assignee as the present invention, which is hereby incorporated by reference.

Ser. No. 07/965,954, having internal docket number AT9-92-107, filed Oct. 23, 1992 for SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DYNAMICALLY CONTROLLING REMOTE PROCESSES FROM A PERFORMANCE MONITOR, currently co-pending, and assigned to the same assignee as the present invention, which is hereby incorporated by reference.

Ser. No. 07/965,981, having internal docket number AT9-92-141, filed Oct. 23, 1992 for SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MONITORING AND OPTIMIZING PERFORMANCE IN A DATA PROCESSING SYSTEM, currently co-pending, and assigned to the same assignee as the present invention, which is hereby incorporated by reference.

Ser. NO. 07/965,953, having internal docket number AT9-92-146, filed Oct. 23, 1992 for SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ANNOTATION OF REAL TIME DATA IN A DATA PROCESSING SYSTEM, currently co-pending, and assigned to the same assignee as the present invention, which is hereby incorporated by reference.

TECHNICAL FIELD

This invention relates to the area of data processing systems, and more particularly to the field of performance tools used to analyze the operations of data processing systems.

BACKGROUND ART

As data processing systems continue to grow in complexity, traditional tools used in the development, design and debug of such systems become increasingly impractical to use. For example, in the development and design of personal computers, an engineer could use a logic analyzer and oscilloscope to assist in locating errors in hardware and software. As the software running on these data processing systems became more complex, tools such as in-circuit emulators were developed, whereby the instruction flow of a central processing unit (CPU) could be captured and analyzed. These types of tools still require a large amount of human intervention and human analysis to assist in problem determination.

Various types of software tools have been introduced in the marketplace to assist in monitoring a data processing system, such as the System Performance Monitor/2 from-IBM. This tool provides a graphical interface to visually depict various aspects of a data processing system, and greatly reduces the amount of time required to analyze the operation of a data processing system. Although these systems provide a substantial improvement over previous methods for monitoring and analyzing a data processing system, there are still certain deficiencies. First, they are geared towards hardware resources in a data processing system, and do not fully address the ability to monitor software processes or applications. Secondly, the flexibility and granularity provided are limited. Further, performance data is merely output to a user display device, and thus does not provide full flexibility in analyzing the data being captured.

Network monitoring tools such as IBM NetView/6000 (TM) programs are concerned primarily with supervision and corrective action aiming at keeping the network resources available and accessible. Resource availability is the concern of such tools, rather than resource utilization. For example, IBM NetView/6000 tracks the amount of free space of a disk.

There is a need to provide a data processing system performance tool that is flexible and easy to use, that can monitor hardware as well as software events and process activities, that can capture data (e.g. read sampled data) for subsequent retrieval and analysis, and that provides other facilities to further analyze and categorize such captured data.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

It is an object of the present invention to provide a highly flexible analysis tool for a data processing system.

It is a further object of the present invention to provide a performance tool for a data processing system.

It is yet a further object of the present invention to provide a tool for monitoring, capturing, saving, retrieval and analysis of data processing system operations.

These objects and others are accomplished by a performance tool, its related application programming interfaces and the performance daemon are designed for interactive selection of performance statistics across a network of computer systems, the control of the flow of performance data, and the monitoring of the remote host(s) performance in live graphs.

Some of the key aspects of the design are in the combination of (1) graphical monitoring of remote data in highly customizable graphs capable of combining plotting styles; (2) the monitoring program is not required to know which hosts in the network can supply statistics and which statistics are available from each host; (3) interactive exploration of the sources of statistics on the network and the collection of statistics available from each source; and (4) the negotiation of what data systems processes to monitor across the network.

A computer system is made up of a variety of different types of hardware and software components, such as network nodes, CPUs, memory, processes, etc. In the field of performance analysis, these objects represent different contexts for the collection of performance data, and the computation of performance statistics.

Since the computing environment can be decomposed into successively smaller and smaller components, it defines a hierarchy of these performance analysis contexts. In the xmperf performance tool disclosed herein, all statistics are associated with particular contexts, and these contexts are identified by listing all the contexts which are traversed in going from the top-level context to that