The Dual Timestamping Methodology for Visualizing Distributed Applications

View/ Open
Date
1995Author
Topol, Brad Byer
Stasko, John T.
Sunderam, Vaidy
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
This article motivates and describes the dual timestamping methodology, a
novel monitoring technique whose goal is to provide first class support for
the visualization and animation of distributed and parallel applications.
Central to this methodology is the use of both a primary and secondary
timestamp in trace events. The primary timestamp is a logical timestamp that
provides information about the concurrency of events. This information is
useful for generating visualizations that depict the events as occurring in
parallel. The secondary timestamp provides a normalized, causality preserving,
real-time clock for use in performance visualization. The dual timestamping
methodology is the basis for PVaniM, a collection of general purpose and
application-specific visualizations of PVM applications. The implementation
of PVaniM relies solely on macros and postprocessors. Because system
modifications were not required, the PVaniM implementation strategies are
general and easily adaptable to other distributed computing system domains.