Software Performance and Scalability: A Quantitative Approach

Part 3. Applying API Profiling

	Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools, he is nothing, with tools he is all.
	--Thomas Carlyle, 1795-1881

One of the most effective approaches to identifying quantitatively the most expensive software program execution paths is through API profiling. API profiling generates detailed and quantitative execution profiles for a software program under test.

With the API profiling framework introduced in this part, one can easily turn the API profiling data into performance maps with which one can easily spot the most expensive execution paths. Developers can then figure out how to reduce the costs of the identified expensive execution paths by adopting more efficient designs and implementations, and thus improve the performance and scalability of the software system under development.

This last part of the book consists of the following four chapters:

• Chapter 7—Defining API Profiling Framework

• Chapter 8—Enabling API Profiling Framework

• Chapter 9—Implementing API Profiling Framework

• Chapter 10—Case Study: Applying API Profiling to Solving Software Performance and Scalability Challenges

The material selected for this part is self-complete from defining through enabling and implementing a simple API profiling framework, the perfBasic API profiling framework. The last chapter illustrates how you can apply API profiling to solving real-world software performance and scalability problems more efficiently, which is the ultimate goal of introducing API profiling framework ...