Opening a Trace File

• At program startup, using the -tracefile command line parameter.  If this option is not used, the File Open dialog window will be displayed automatically, immediately after the program has initialized.
• After program startup, using the  File - Open action from the Global Toolbar or Main Menu.  This action displays the File Open dialog window.

Figure 1.  The File Open dialog window

File Open Dialog.  A trace file is selected for loading using the File Open dialog window depicted in Figure 1, either by selecting a file from the list or typing the file's name in the space provided.  The list may be filtered using the Files of type combo box control.

Indexing Records.  Regardless of which method is used to initiate the loading process, a trace file must first be indexed before it can be analyzed.  Indexing is a process by which the program scans through the trace file, locating and remembering the position of each trace record for faster access later.  Indexing is implemented as a job which must run to completion before any further access to the file is permitted.  Thus, there may be a slight delay, particularly for files containing many records, before the Report Page is populated with records, and before any information appears in the Summary Page.  The job progress monitor in the Global Toolbar provides an indication of the progress of an indexing job.

Accessing Record Data.  It is important to realize that, except for very small traces, a file is not loaded into memory all at once.  Instead, the Trace Analyzer loads records on demand for the purposes of viewing, filtering, printing, etc.  This method of reading records on demand is known as random file access.  While this method has the benefit of using less memory than if the file were loaded all at once up front, it also requires that the trace file not be moved, changed, or otherwise tampered with by external programs while it is being read by the Trace Analyzer.

Tip:  Because records may be randomly accessed from the trace file at any time during analysis, it is a good idea to load traces only from the local disk.  Although the program will allow you to load a file from a network attached drive, you are strongly advised not to do so, as accessing records in a file over a network connection may have a severe, negative impact on performance.

Closing a Trace File

• Explicitly by the user with the  File - Close action from the Global Toolbar or Main Menu.
• Automatically, when a new file is opened.
• Automatically, when the Trace Analyzer program is closed.

• A data filter currently is applied to the trace data which currently is loaded.  The assumption here is that the user may wish to save or export the filtered data before closing the file.  In this case, a simple dialog, prompting a confirmation, is displayed.
• One or more jobs are running and/or are queued, which depend upon the trace data currently loaded.  In this case, the request to close the file poses a conflict for the job processing engine, since closing the file would preempt the running/queued jobs.  The user is prompted to resolve this conflict via the Job Conflict dialog window.

Saving Trace Data

A file name can be chosen from the list or typed into the File name field.  The format in which the file is to be saved is selected from the Save File Format combo box control.  The possible formats are:

• the native format of the currently loaded file;  or
• delimited text.

Saving in Native File Format

Exporting as Delimited Text

When writing the file as delimited text, it is necessary to select the delimiter characters to be used.  Delimiter characters are used by other programs into which this data might be imported, such as a spreadsheet.  The delimiter characters allow these programs to identify where each field begins and ends, and to differentiate between text fields and numeric fields.  The delimiter characters are selected from the combo box components within the Delimiters panel:

Field

This combo box is used to select the character which will be used to separate the individual data fields from one another.  The boundaries identified by the field delimiter correspond to the column boundaries in the Overview Report.  The possible field delimiter choices are:

• comma (,)
• semi-colon (;)
• tab

Text

This combo box is used to select the character which will be used to enclose fields which represent text (as opposed to those which represent numeric values).  This is necessary in case the field delimiter character happens to be embedded in a text data field.  By surrounding each text element in a pair of known delimiter characters, an importing program will not, for instance, misinterpret a comma which is embedded in a data field for a delimiter which is meant to separate fields.  If the chosen text delimiter happens to be embedded within a text data field, each occurrence is doubled before the field is written to file.  For example, if the text delimiter was a single quotation mark ('), the data field, some 'text' data would be exported as:  'some ''text'' data'.  The possible text delimiter choices are:

• double quotation mark (")
• single quotation mark (')

Completing the Save

Clicking the Cancel button cancels the save request and dismisses the file dialog window.