Importance

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Abstract

The present invention is a system, method, and computer readable medium for representing program event trace information in a way which is very compact and efficient, and yet supports a wide variety of queries regarding system performance. The tracing and reduction of the present invention may be dynamic, in which case information is obtained and added to the trace representation in real-time. Alternately, the tracing and reduction may be static, in which case a trace text file or binary file is obtained from a trace buffer, and the reduction takes place using the trace file as input. The trace information, whether obtained statically or dynamically, is represented as a tree of events. The present invention may be used to present many types of trace information in a compact manner which supports performance queries. For example, the tree structure of the present invention may reflect the call stacks observed during a program's execution, and statistics regarding the time spent in the various routines and call stacks may be stored at each node of the tree. The tree structure may be used to store performance information regarding Java bytecodes executed, memory allocated, or other types of performance information. The trace information is presented in a manner which is compact and efficient, and may be used to quickly and easily answer a variety of performance queries. Further, a system may be traced for long periods of time without losing useful performance information due to a limited buffer space.

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First Claim