Question reagrding the ability to compare profile sessions

bob53050bob53050 Posts: 7
edited January 24, 2010 5:58PM in ANTS Performance Profiler Previous Versions
Hello All,

Is there a way in the ANTs performance profiler to compare 2 profiler sessions to determine performance differences?

Thanks in advance,

Bob Hanson
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  • StephenCStephenC Posts: 314
    Hi Bob,

    I know this is unusual but can you do me a favour and first answer me two questions:

    - tell me how you would expect it to work if ANTS Profiler did come with comparison functionality? What would be your expectation within an interface for doing this? Just a brief idea.

    - what level of comparison are you looking for? General, large granularity of analysis? What sort of data are you looking for? Graphs, just numbers etc..?

    I'm just interested in hearing what you would need from the feature for it to be valuable.

    If you don't have the time then just say so and I'll give you some tips that you can use to do a comparison even though its currently a bit of a hack. We are considering fully featured comparison functionality but can't seem to get definite answers when we ask.

    Thank you!

    Stephen
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  • bob53050bob53050 Posts: 7
    No problem Stephen,

    If we can see a macro view of performance changes (assys) and then be able to drill down to the method level quickly to see the differences of performance, that would be very useful for developers to stay on par with perfperformance versus an after thought.
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  • StephenCStephenC Posts: 314
    Hi,

    there are a few problems with doing a comparison in any profiler -

    Take the tree view for example:
    Stack traces change in the number of methods executed due to reorganization and also when when methods might be renamed.

    Other changes include that if a profiler is being run when the computer is under different loads then this can affect timings due to the large CPU which other applications may be responsible for.

    If we take the ANTS interface for example the method executions can happen at completely different times in the timeline.

    The simplest solution might be to just provide 2 grids (similar to the All Methods grid), that allow some Diff comparison to show faster/slower times. This would mean that it will be total time spent in that method over the course of the entire application rather than just in a particular stack trace due to the issues listed above.

    Back to your original question about comparison - Switch to the All Methods grid, you can select a region of time you are interested in to filter the methods if you want or just show all of them. Then select a row in the grid and do a select all (Ctrl + A), then copy (Ctrl + C) and paste into Excel. Do the same for the second results file and do all the diff's and comparisons you want from there. Not ideal I know but the best I can offer at the moment.

    If you have any comments about the points I raised above then please let me know.

    Thanks,

    Stephen
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