Getting Started

The Profiler can be used to investigate performance issues, providing four separate tools for you to choose from, namely:

Call Graph
Stack Profile
Memory Profile
Memory Leaks

You select these tools from the Profiler toolbar.

Access

Ribbon

Execute > Tools > Profiler

Tools

Tool	Description	See also
Call Graph	Analyzes performance by taking samples during an activity in a program. Each sample represents a stack. The samples are taken at intervals controlled using the toolbar. In this scenario, poor performance is rated by the patterns of behavior that repeat the most during the sample time period. This figure is used to weight the Call Graph produced.	Call Graph
Memory Profile	Analyzes performance by hooking the memory allocations made by a program. In this scenario, poor performance is rated by the activities making the most requests for memory. This figure is used to weight the Call Graph produced.	Memory Profile
Stack Profile	The Stack Profiler enables you to set a marker in your source code so that whenever execution hits that marker, a full stack trace is captured. As the application continues executing and the marked position is accessed from a variety of places within the running executable, a very detailed and useful picture is built up showing hot spots and usage scenarios for a particular point in code. The Stack Profile report, like the Memory Profile report, is displayed in 'reverse stack' order. This means that the root of the report is always a single node (in this case the marker) and the tree then fans out to show all the various places the marked position has been accessed from.	Stack Profile
Memory Leaks	Analyzes memory leaks by hooking the memory operations performed by a program. What is produced is a Call Graph presenting the Call Stacks that allocated memory for which a free operation was not detected.	Memory Leaks

Toolbar Buttons

Button	Action	See also
	Displays a menu of options for managing your Profiling session.	Setting Options Analyzer Scripts
	Launches the configured application to be profiled. By default, this is the application configured in the active Analyzer Script.	Managing Analyzer Scripts
	Indicates the state of the sampler. When green, sampling is enabled; when red, sampling is disabled.
	Stops the Profiler process; if any samples have been collected, the Report button and Discard Data button are active.
	Generates a report from the current data collection.	Generate, Save and Load Profile Reports
	Displays the Profiling tool in use, which determines the fields shown in the Profiler window. Click on the drop-down arrow and select a different tool, which changes the window fields.
	Discards the collected data. You are prompted to confirm the discard.
	Displays the Help topic for this window.