Method and system for compensating for instrumentation overhead in trace data by computing average minimum event times

摘要

A method and system for compensating for instrumentation overhead in trace data by computing average minimum event times is provided. In order to profile a program, the program is executed to generate trace records that are written to a trace file. A set of trace event records are processed, and the trace events are represented as one or more nodes in a tree data structure. One or more performance statistics are stored at each node in the tree data structure, and a performance statistic at each node is processed to determine an overhead compensation value. The overhead compensation value is determined by computing a local overhead value for each node in the tree data structure. The total execution time of a routine corresponding to the event represented by the node is retrieved, and the local overhead value is computed as the average of the execution time over the number of calls to the routine and the number of calls from the routine to other routines. The minimum of all of the local overhead values is the maximum possible global value used as the overhead compensation value. The overhead compensation value is then applied to the performance statistic at each node.