Command Line Performance Profiling a Child Process

Performance Validator can be controlled from the command line prompt.

This tutorial describes in detail how to performance profile a child process launched from a process.

Sometimes the process you want to performance profile is not the process you are launching, but a process launched by that process.

Related tutorials:

Performance profiling a child process.
Performance profiling a service.
Performance profiling a child process of a service.
Performance profiling an IIS ISAPI DLL.
Performance profiling ASP.Net with IIS.
Performance profiling ASP.Net with Web Development Server.

Monitor the first child process

The command line is:

performanceValidator.exe -program "c:\test results\testbed.exe"
                      -programToMonitorEXE "<<Any>>"
                      -programToMonitorLaunchCount 1
                      -saveSession "c:\test results\testFirstChildProcess.pvm" 
                      -hideUI

The above command line can be broken into its constituent items:

• Specify the program to run. -program “c:\test results\testbed.exe”
• Specify the program to monitor. -programToMonitorEXE “<<Any>>”
• Specify that it should be the first program launched. -programToMonitorLaunchCount 1
• The resulting session is saved in c:\test results\testFirstChildProcess.pvm. -saveSession “c:\test results\testFirstChildProcess.pvm”
• Run Coverage Validator with the user interface hidden. -hideUI

This command line runs testbed.exe but monitors the first program that testbed.exe launches. When the monitored program closes the performance profiling results are finalised and then saved to the session c:\test results\testFirstChildProcess.pvm. Finally, Performance Validator is closed.

Monitor a specific child process

The command line is:

performanceValidator.exe -program "c:\test results\testbed.exe"
                      -programToMonitorEXE "c:\test results\testbed_helper.exe"
                      -programToMonitorLaunchCount 2
                      -saveSession "c:\test results\testbedHelper2.pvm" 
                      -hideUI

The above command line can be broken into its constituent items:

• Specify the program to run. -program “c:\test results\testbed.exe”
• Specify the program to monitor. -program “c:\test results\testbed_helper.exe”
• Specify that we are interested in the second time testbed_helper.exe is launched. -programToMonitorLaunchCount 2
• The resulting session is saved in c:\test results\testbedHelper2.pvm. -saveSession “c:\test results\testbedHelper2.pvm”
• Run Coverage Validator with the user interface hidden. -hideUI

This command line runs testbed.exe but monitors the second launch of testbed_helper.exe. When the testbed_helper.exe closes, the performance profiling results are finalised and then saved to the session c:\test results\testbedHelper2.pvm. Finally, Performance Validator is closed.

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