HP Caliper 5.3 User Guide (5900-1558, February 2011)

For information about what the options mean, see “How to Read an Advisor Report” (p. 82).
As with the HP Caliper command-line options, each of the Advisor’s command-line options has a
variable counterpart in the .caliperinit file that can set an option value. The variable name
is the same as the option, with hyphens (-) replaced with underscores (_). Later uses of the same
command-line option or .caliperinit file variable overrides earlier uses.
Getting Started with the Advisor: Examples
To run the Advisor, you need to make one or more HP Caliper measurement runs on an application.
Simplest Example
Assume that you have made these data collection runs:
$ caliper cpu my_app
$ caliper fprof my_app
$ caliper ecount my_app
The output databases are saved in the databases directory by default and are named cpu, fprof,
and ecount.
Then, you run the Advisor using this command:
$ caliper advise
HP Caliper looks in the databases directory for databases and produces an analysis of all current
HP Caliper runs, using all the databases in the databases directory. If no databases are found,
you receive an error message telling you that there are no runs to analyze.
The analysis report is produced on stdout.
NOTE: You will receive an error message specifying that the “global name 'dbase_dir' is not
defined” if the default databases directory contains old performance data. To correct this problem,
you should delete the old performance data in the databases directory or specify a different
database path. For information on how to specify a database path, see “Command Line to Invoke
the Advisor” (page 78).
More Typical Examples
These examples are more typical of how you will use the Advisor.
When you first start using the Advisor, you will typically run these measurements:
• On HP-UX systems, use:
$ caliper cpu my_app
$ caliper fprof my_app
• On Linux systems, use:
$ caliper ecount my_app
$ caliper fprof my_app
Next, run the Advisor on the collected performance data:
$ caliper advise
HP Caliper looks for the databases in the databases directory and produces an analysis report on
stdout. If the Advisor recommends an additional measurement run, make the run. For example:
$ caliper dcache my_app
Then, re-run the Advisor to analyze the full set of performance data and produce a more
comprehensive analysis report:
$ caliper advise
If any suggested changes are made to the application, then you can measure and analyze the
revised program:
80 Using the HP Caliper Advisor