Setting profiling preferences

To change the defaults used while profiling an application, follow these steps:

Select Window > Preferences. The Preferences window opens.
From the tree on the left, select Profiling and Logging. The Profiling and Logging preferences pane opens.
Use this pane to:
1. Enable or disable profiling or logging
2. Change the default project name of a new profiling session.
3. Specify whether to show helpful tips about profiling.
4. Specify the port number that the agent uses to connect to the Agent Controller.
To change the resources appearing in the Profiling Monitor view, the text colors in the Display Console view, or the colors in the execution flow graph, use Appearance and the items below it.
If you are working with more than one machine, use Hosts to identify them. The last machine in the list is selected by default.
To identify logging agents, use Logging Agents.
To filter out groups of packages or classes from profiling, use Profiling > Filters. For details, see: Specify the profiling filters.
To set options for all profiling agents (that is, to specify whether profiling should analyze the application heap and the application execution time), use Profiling > Options.
Note: To set profiling options for a single agent, right click on an agent, then select Properties > Next.
Click Show details for additional choices about profiling behavior.
- By default, the checkbox, My application uses too much memory, is selected. This means that only heap data will be collected. Use this option to find memory leaks and to analyze heap information, such as classes loaded, number of instances per class, class total size, and garbage collection information.
- To collect additional information, including the instance level, click Show details then check Show instance level information.
- By default, the checkbox, My application is too slow, is not selected. This will prevent the execution flow events such as method entries and method exits from being collected.
- To collect information about classes that have been filtered out, click Show details then check Collect boundary classes excluded by the filter. Boundary classes are ones directly invoked by the classes that were included within the filter criteria.
- To collect execution flow events, such as method entries and method exits, select Show execution flow graphical details. The Execution Flow view and table are available only if this option is selected.
To limit the data being collected, use Profiling > Collections.
- By default, the profiling session ends as soon as the profiled application stops running. To repeatedly invoke profiling, select Stop profiling after a number of invocations and set the number.
- To collect data for a period of time, select Stop profiling after a specified amount of time and set the number of seconds.
Click Apply. Your choices take effect in all currently open profiling windows. Click OK to close the Preferences window.

Related concepts
Overview of the Profiling Tool