HP UX Caliper Software manual How to Read an Advisor Report

1Application object being analyzed, which version (when it was last modified), the processor type and speed, and operating system version.

2Performance databases being analyzed.

3 Rule files that were used.

4 Advice section, giving performance tuning advice.

5First piece of advice, set off by a line of dashes (--------).

6Second piece of advice, set off by a line of dashes (--------).

7Cutoff settings, which specify how much of the advice to print.

This was run on an HP-UX 11i V2 September 2004 OE system. Reports run on other systems look similar, except that the specific advice given is unique to the application and the system.

How to Read an Advisor Report

Each Advisor run analyzes one or more application objects. (Currently, only executable objects can be analyzed.) A separate report is output for each object analyzed. The reports are in alphabetic name order.

See “HP Caliper Advisor Report, with Annotations” (p. 81) for an example report.

The description section of the report precedes the advice section. The description section is important because the given set of databases might contain several different executables, different versions of the same executable, and performance data from the same or different types of systems. The Advisor reports specifically which version, of which executable, and measured on which system that the advice applies to. In general, the Advisor selects the most recent version of each executable it finds in the database(s) and only uses consistent performance data for each analyzed object.

There are three elements to a piece of advice:

•Index

The index value represents the approximate importance of a particular piece of advice. The values typically range from 0.0 to 100.0. The index value does not indicate the improvement that could be achieved if the improvement suggestion is followed. It is a rough means of ordering the relevance of various unrelated performance issues. You can use the Advisor --advice-cutoffcommand-line option to specify what the minimum index value should be.

•Class

All advice is classified as to what area of application performance it applies to. Every piece of advice belongs to an advice class, which is one of the following:

◦General: advice that doesn’t fit into a single category or can’t easily be classified

◦CPU: items pertaining to non-memory CPU cycles

◦Memory: for memory-related performance issues

◦IO: for any I/O advice

◦System: advice relating to system calls, system resources, process management, and so forth

You can use the Advisor --advice-classescommand-line option to specify which classes of advice should be included in the report.

•Analysis

This is where the performance advice is printed. An example is shown below.

The numbers (which are bold in the PDF version of this guide) are annotations to explain the report—they are not part of the output you receive. See the list at the end of the report for the explanations.

82 Using the HP Caliper Advisor