A Framework for Recording and Visualizing Event Traces in Parallel Systems with Load Balancing

During the development of parallel application programs or load balancing strategies, it is extremely helpful to have powerful and easy-to-use facilities to observe what is happening at run-time. For this purpose, a general framework for defining events and for recording and visualizing event traces is proposed. Data collected from interviews with application developers and system developers is used to identify a basic set of abstract event types that are meaningful in many different application contexts and that can be customized to fit individual needs. The object-oriented design of a class hierarchy that implements the event model is outlined. We expect that our framework can be a good starting point for the development of a portable library for the recording of events and of portable tools that make it easy to achieve flexible visualizations of the run-time behavior of parallel and distributed applications with load balancing.     «

During the development of parallel application programs or load balancing strategies, it is extremely helpful to have powerful and easy-to-use facilities to observe what is happening at run-time. For this purpose, a general framework for defining events and for recording and visualizing event traces is proposed. Data collected from interviews with application developers and system developers is used to identify a basic set of abstract event types that are meaningful in many different application...     »