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The backtrace display shows self time rather than total time. There are a number of issues with this: 1) The column titles say "Time" and "% Time" but are actually "Self" times and thus this is misleading/inaccurate. 2) "Time" and "%Time" would be *much* more useful than self times in this context. * By way of comparison, YourKit shows overall, not self times in this context. Overall I find myself repeatedly needing to know the overall time spent in and under various methods via *all* call chains in a snapshot and NetBeans 6 currently provides no effective means to obtain this information. The backtrace display implies it is providing this information but does not. Besides profiler performance and/or instability this is the single biggest issue I currently see with the NetBeans profiler.
On an enhancement note, for anyone who has not done so, it would be good to look at Quantify. 10 years ago this profiler had features most profilers today are still missing. One of the most useful was a detail view on any method the profiler passed through. This detail view would show all callers, all called method, # of calls by each caller and of called method, % of overall spent in/below the method attributable to each caller, etc, etc. Essentially it gave an ability to focus in on "what's up with this one method" -- with the ability to click through to callers and called methods, of course. It seems that the NetBeans profiler must have all the same information at its disposal (albeit less when in sampling mode) and much of it is available somehow through the UI. It's just that you have to jump around to find what you need -- with the lengths you currently have to go to to get "overall" [self plus children] time for all backtraces and total this being the worst example.
This is clearly an enhancement. Nothing is broken and current state is as designed. You are right we can improve the column title to better reflect what is displayed, but this should be filed as separate issue.
When the UI labels say they're giving one thing (the useful one I want) and give me something else (that's all but useless), that's a defect. Certainly you can split this into 2 issues if you like: 1) DEFECT: UI labels are intolerably misleading on Time columns in backtrace pane 2) ENHANCEMENT: Add overall time columns to backtrace pane Given that I see almost no use to self time in the backtrace pane, I see these as one defect -- don't mess with the labels but rather change the code to lookup the right time to match the label. Any which way you slice it, the UI labels currently lead to a very inaccurate interpretation of the data and seeing overall times in this panel would be a tremendous benefit. If you want to have both "Time" and "Self Time" (and % thereof) columns in this panel, that's fine and good. Just (1) make the UI accurately label its results and (2) get overall time in these results as soon as possible. Until both are addressed I think I'll have to use other profilers again.
> Certainly you can split this into 2 issues if you like: > 1) DEFECT: UI labels are intolerably misleading on Time columns in backtrace pane > 2) ENHANCEMENT: Add overall time columns to backtrace pane Right, this is correct approach.
I'll leave filing the other bug up to you as the user issue is summarized here. The approach you choose to take to addressing that is not my concern as long as the issue is fully addressed.
Created attachment 50033 [details] jstack dump taken of deadlock
Ooops. Disregard the deadlock attachment -- that's for another issue.
Obviously the NetBeans team can disagree, but I'd posit this as a top-priority enhancement for NB 6.1. I may even find time to dig into the source on this one as this severely limits the utility of the NetBeans profiler for any serious work.
Milestone cleanup: future->next