Finding Problem Paths Through Your Program

See Also

When your program has many paths to or from a particular section of code, it might happen that a few or only one of these paths are significant causes of performance problems. Using the Callers-Callees tab enables you to navigate the call tree to find these paths.

To find the significant path or paths:

  1. Select the inclusive values for the metrics you want to examine by doing one of the following:

    You might want to select the percentage as well as the value, to see the proportions of the metrics attributable to different paths.

  2. In the Functions tab, click the column head of the most interesting inclusive metric to make it the sort metric.
  3. Select a function of interest that has a high inclusive metric.

    A good candidate is a function that has many paths diverging or converging on it.

  4. Click the Callers-Callees tab.

    The selected function appears in the center pane.

  5. Click the column head of the attributed metric that corresponds to the most interesting inclusive metric, to make it the sort metric.
  6. Examine the metrics for the callers or callees.
  7. Select a function that has a high attributed metric value or percentage.

    The newly selected function appears in the center pane, and its callers and callees appear in the upper and lower panes.

  8. Repeat Step 7 until you find the path or paths that are responsible for the high metric values.

    If you want to reverse the direction of your search, switch between the callers pane and the callees pane.

tip If you want to examine the metrics for each function while you are navigating the call tree, look at the Summary tab.

When you have found a significant path, look in your code to see what arguments or code constructs might be responsible for the metric values. You can use the Source tab to see the file containing the selected function.

See also
The Callers-Callees Tab
Exclusive, Inclusive, and Attributed Metrics
The Summary Tab
The Source Tab
The Functions Tab

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