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Profiler

  • February 13, 2020
  • 3 replies
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D

Hello,

Brand new to this forum, my name is Nicolas and I am in charge to optimize COBOL programs converted from IDEAL.

I have two questions regarding the profiler.

1. The results of the Profiler are quite inconsistent on our site for Online programs.

I ran 10 times the same transaction with the same input and results in MF Profile are difficult to analyse. Sometimes there is one procedure taking 100%. another one there are four procedures taking each 25%, then 3 other procedures taking each 33%

Anybody had inconsistent results like this and have a clue on how to improve the profiling on Online programs ?

2. Since 2 or 3 monthes ago, there are sometimes new lines at the beginning of the profiler in the Call Count.

Please look at the attachment.

There are some weird characters, is this normal or a problem on my site ?

Before I had only one line in this section. What are the new lines for and means ?

Thanks and Kind regards.

Nicolas.

    3 replies

    D

    Hello,

    Brand new to this forum, my name is Nicolas and I am in charge to optimize COBOL programs converted from IDEAL.

    I have two questions regarding the profiler.

    1. The results of the Profiler are quite inconsistent on our site for Online programs.

    I ran 10 times the same transaction with the same input and results in MF Profile are difficult to analyse. Sometimes there is one procedure taking 100%. another one there are four procedures taking each 25%, then 3 other procedures taking each 33%

    Anybody had inconsistent results like this and have a clue on how to improve the profiling on Online programs ?

    2. Since 2 or 3 monthes ago, there are sometimes new lines at the beginning of the profiler in the Call Count.

    Please look at the attachment.

    There are some weird characters, is this normal or a problem on my site ?

    Before I had only one line in this section. What are the new lines for and means ?

    Thanks and Kind regards.

    Nicolas.

    I haven't used the COBOL Profiler myself, but I'll note that sampling profilers can give inconsistent results for programs and procedures with short lifetimes, because in that case it's largely a matter of chance which program / procedure happens to be active when the profiler checks the current instruction address. If it's possible to make your program run longer by doing more work, you may get better results.

    In some cases it's useful to artificially increase the lifetime of the outermost program, e.g. by having it loop through the same operations many times, in order to get more stable profiling output.

    As for the garbage characters - that does look like erroneous output, but whether it's due to some known restriction on the profiler, a known issue, or a new bug I couldn't say. If no one else responds on this thread I might be able to find some time to try to reproduce your issue.

    Are these standalone programs or running under Enterprise Server?

    Is there a sample test case (program, input data, Profiler settings) you can attach? I realize this may not be feasible.

    D

    I haven't used the COBOL Profiler myself, but I'll note that sampling profilers can give inconsistent results for programs and procedures with short lifetimes, because in that case it's largely a matter of chance which program / procedure happens to be active when the profiler checks the current instruction address. If it's possible to make your program run longer by doing more work, you may get better results.

    In some cases it's useful to artificially increase the lifetime of the outermost program, e.g. by having it loop through the same operations many times, in order to get more stable profiling output.

    As for the garbage characters - that does look like erroneous output, but whether it's due to some known restriction on the profiler, a known issue, or a new bug I couldn't say. If no one else responds on this thread I might be able to find some time to try to reproduce your issue.

    Are these standalone programs or running under Enterprise Server?

    Is there a sample test case (program, input data, Profiler settings) you can attach? I realize this may not be feasible.

    Hello Michael,
    Thanks for your suggestion ! That's a bit what I thought, Online transactions are supposed to answer quickly. So the entire treatment only lasts a few seconds at worst. One database request last a bit longer than usual and all statistics are altered.
    I will discuss with some people knowing the system better than me to see, if maybe we can setup a slowed down environment dedicated to this profiling.
    For the garbage characters, we are running under Enterprise Server and unfortunately I can't provide sample test case.
    Do you know what information is in these additional lines ? From what I see, it seems to have some fields names from my tables.
    If the infos are interesting, it could be maybe valuable for us to investigate these garbage characters.
    Kind regards,
    Nicolas

    D
    Hello Michael,
    Thanks for your suggestion ! That's a bit what I thought, Online transactions are supposed to answer quickly. So the entire treatment only lasts a few seconds at worst. One database request last a bit longer than usual and all statistics are altered.
    I will discuss with some people knowing the system better than me to see, if maybe we can setup a slowed down environment dedicated to this profiling.
    For the garbage characters, we are running under Enterprise Server and unfortunately I can't provide sample test case.
    Do you know what information is in these additional lines ? From what I see, it seems to have some fields names from my tables.
    If the infos are interesting, it could be maybe valuable for us to investigate these garbage characters.
    Kind regards,
    Nicolas

    I'm afraid I don't know enough about the profiler to say what's supposed to be on those lines with the garbage characters. If no one else chimes in on this thread, you'll probably need to open an incident with Micro Focus Customer Care.

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