HP Caliper User's Guide

Figure 7-4 HP Caliper GUI Toolbar
Figure 7-5 shows the Advisor menu, which has two actions: Generate Advice and Show
Advisor View.
Figure 7-5 HP Caliper GUI Advisor Menu
Generate Advice does the same thing as the toolbar icon: generate new advice from
the selected performance data and display it in an Advisor view.
Show Advisor View brings up the Advisor view with the advice from the last analysis
run. You can use this option to retrieve the Advisor view if you previously closed it.
This action also appears in the Window/Show View menu.
Reviewing and Acting on the Advice
The hardest part of tuning the performance of an application is figuring out what to
do. The HP Caliper Advisor tries to help with that. By analyzing already collected
performance data, the Advisor tries to guide you to potential performance problems
in your application and suggest possible ways to improve them. It gives three different
types of advice:
• Improvement advice suggests specific actions that you can try that might improve
a performance problem. This is the most helpful type of advice.
• Measurement advice suggests a specific HP Caliper measurement to take to further
diagnose a potential problem. If you do make the suggested measurement run(s),
then regenerate the Advisor analysis. Doing so will often trigger some more
improvement advice.
• Explanation advice tries to explain what a specific performance metric means and
why it might indicate a problem area. Ideally, this type of advice gives you some
insight into a performance problem.
118 Using the HP Caliper Advisor in the GUI