Graphical Manipulation of Performance Data with Perl/Tk

CS-TR-96-10

Authors: Steve Wong, Robert Biddle
Source: GZipped PostScript (98kb); Adobe PDF (337kb)


Management of complex computer systems is especially difficult because no two systems are completely alike. Accordingly, the performance data essential to management varies from system to system. Moreover, as systems evolve and as management expertise develops, demands on performance data continue to change.

This paper describes a tool for graphically manipulating distributed computer system performance data. The tool allows system managers to define, adjust, and tune performance monitoring information easily, so enabling more effective system administration. The software provides a flexible graphic user interface, yet is capable of manipulating streams of performance data in real-time. The graphic elements are provided by the flexible Tk toolkit, and the fast processing for data manipulation is supported by dynamic compilation using the Perl programming language.

The work described in this paper is part of a larger project, CR, involving development of a performance management system that uses a ``building block'' approach to allow easily configurable monitoring of heterogeneous distributed systems.


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