Improved Help for Profiling Beginners

Questions about YourKit Java Profiler
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RangerRob
Posts: 64
Joined: Wed Oct 06, 2004 7:56 am

Improved Help for Profiling Beginners

Post by RangerRob »

I'm not sure how relevant this is but one of the things I find slightly lacking in YourKit is documentation for people new to profiling. I think the documentation already provided with YourKit is excellent with regards to using the product itself, however there is very little to let the user know exactly what they are looking for.

For example when I first started working with YourKit during the 3.1 EAP it was my first experience with profiling, I knew why I wanted to do it and why it was so important, however what I didn't know is what I was actually looking for in the mass of data YourKit returns.

Now I'm not saying that YourKit returns an unorganised mass, far from it (it's a very readable and well presented product), however unless you know what you are actually looking for it is very hard to find it. I wound up purchasing a book on profiling to learn more about it, however I think it would be a great approach if the YourKit team could write some documentation targeted at people new to profiling but based around the YourKit profiling software.

I'd love to see the following points clearly described:

1> Why profiling is important (ok most people would probably know this if they were looking for a profiler so possibly ignore this).
2> What to look for when profiling CPU (what is good or bad and possible solutions for resolving different performance issues).
3> What to look for when profiling memory (what is good or bad and possible solutions for resolving different performance issues).

The YourKit team obviously have a great deal of experience profiling applications and they clearly know what is good or bad and could give their views on how to solve some of the more common issues.
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