Collecting trace information – PB Docs 2017

There are three ways to collect trace information. You can
use:

Use the Profiling tab if you want to trace an entire application
run in the development environment. For more information, see Tracing an entire application in
PowerBuilder.

Use a window or trace objects and functions if you want to create
a trace file for selected parts of the application or the entire
application, either in the development environment or when running an
executable file. See Using a window and
Collecting trace information using PowerScript
functions.

Whichever method you use, you can specify:

Trace file names and
labels

The default name of the trace file is the name of the application
with the extension PBP. The trace file is saved in the directory where
the PBL or executable file resides and overwrites any existing file of
the same name. If you run several different tests on the same
application, you should change the trace file name for each test.

You can also associate a label with the trace data. If you are
tracing several different parts of an application in a single test run,
you can associate a different label with the trace data (the trace
block) for each part of the application.

Timer kinds

There are three kinds of timer: clock, process, and thread. If
your analysis does not require timing information, you can omit timing
information from the trace file to improve performance.

If you do not specify a timer kind, the time at which each
activity begins and ends is recorded using the clock timer, which
measures an absolute time with reference to an external activity, such
as the computer’s start-up time. The clock timer measures time in
microseconds. Depending on the speed of your computer’s central
processing unit, the clock timer can offer a resolution of less than one
microsecond. A timer’s resolution is the smallest unit of time the timer
can measure.

You can also use process or thread timers, which measure time in
microseconds with reference to when the process or thread being executed
started. You should always use the thread timer for distributed
applications. Both process and thread timers exclude the time taken by
any other running processes or threads so that they give you a more
accurate measurement of how long the process or thread is taking to
execute, but both have a lower resolution than the clock timer.

Trace
activities

You can choose to record in the trace file the time at which any
of the following activities occurs. If you are using the System Options
dialog box or a window, you select the check boxes for the activities
you want. If you are using PowerScript functions to collect trace
information, you use the TraceActivity enumerated type to identify the
activity.

When you begin and end tracing, an activity of type ActBegin! is
automatically recorded in the trace file. User-defined activities, which
you use to log informational messages to the trace file, are the only
trace activities enabled by default.