TPTP User Experiences Profiling

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This page discusses user types that we are hoping to solicit feedback regarding user experiences. In particular, we hope to get pointed feedback and make TPTP better for these classes of users.

Come to TPTP as Lead user

J2SE

J2SE 5 and J2SE 6 are supported in TPTP by the new JVMTI interface while J2SE 1.4 and below are supported using the old JVMPI interface. The components of TPTP profiler that are evolving the most relate to the JVMTI profiling experience. If you don't know what version of Java you are using, please use java -version.

Ideal Candidate Criteria For This Survey

The tptp team is undertaking an effort to improve the user experience for the profiler. We are going to do that by working closely with some lead users. The lead users will use the tptp profiler and will be closely supported by the tptp team. The lead users will get usage (and bug) feedback to the tptp team, who will expedite the resolution of issues. The lead user would expect to get a number of deliveries of the profiler during the course of their usage. The lead user may be given prototypes to try. It is anticipated that tptp will work with a number of lead users. Our desire is to get an improved user experience into Gannymede.

Here are the characteristics of the ideal lead user.

• The lead user's application runs on the tptp reference platform (whatever that is: linux, jvm 1.5, etc)
• To make debugging and support simpler, the lead user's application can be easily executed by the tptp test team on their system (reference platform). This implies that there should not be a lot of external "strange" dependencies in the lead user's application, as the tptp team will not be able to easily recreate the lead user's environment.

If you would like to be a lead user, email alexander.n.alexeev@intel.com

Below our formal-like wishes for lead's projects (modules, plugins) which we would like to see in survey. They aren't mandatory but help understand our position. Anyway, please contact, and we will try to find convenient cooperation process.

(in priority order):

• Users of J2SE 5 and J2SE 6 JVMs
• Doesn't require third party's software
• Can work on single computer, doesn't require distributed environment. But requirement to presence of Internet connection isn't a problem
• Easy to deploy
• Isn't very specific application field. Purpose and simple use cases are understandable without special knowledge. Short time for familiarization
• Absence or minimum of native libraries
• Can be downloaded from CVS and built from scratch in Eclipse

J2EE

J2EE profiling in TPTP is currently ramping a new resource. That person is gaining familarity with the codebase. We hope to document use cases here and solicit input in the future.

Our expectation from survey

If brief, we want to change profiler and support with feedback for product. :)

Getting started with TPTP

Information Sources

• TPTP Home page
• TPTP Profiler Documentation

Stable TPTP usage scenarios

Issues which can be identified with TPTP

• Ineffective methods implementation
• Java memory leaks
• "static" specifier loss for data members
• Wrong tasks splitting for multithreading

Profiling types

• Execution profiling
• Heap usage profiling
• Thread profiling

Some User Initial Experiences

As users come forward, we want to capture their initial experiences. We hope that some of these users will choose to become "lead user's" and migrate to the next section. :).

Profile on Server and Enabled mode Collection

A number of folks are trying to use TPTP to profile Tomcat and/or RCP applications and are launching/starting their app either from within the workbench or from a command line script. The summary of one user's initial experiences with the TPTP 4.4 profiler for a Tomcat based application are here

Using TPTP to profile JRE class libraries

paragraph and link here...

Accepted lead user's projects

None, you have a chance :)

Contact points

Places where you can ask questions, discuss and of course proved feedback for the tool:

• TPTP Newsgroup
• TPTP Tracing&Profiling mailing list

We get all information from these sources, analyse and put structured in Wiki. This is important for us and even small observation which published and discussed can affect overall quality and create product more attractive. So, please participate in community process and make TPTP better.