POET: Target-System-Independent Visualizations of
Complex Distributed-Application Executions
Designing and implementing a visual debugger for distributed programs is
a significant challenge. Distributed applications are often large and
frequently exhibit a high degree of complexity. Consequently, a debugger
must address problems of complexity and scale in at least two ways.
First, appropriate user interfaces should allow a user to manage the vast
amount of information typically obtained from distributed executions.
Second, the tool itself, in handling this information, should be
implemented efficiently, providing a user with reasonable response times
for interactive use. Our research efforts, concentrating on these
problems, have led to the development of Poet, a tool for the collection
and presentation of event-based traces of distributed executions. Poet
makes as few assumptions as possible about characteristics that must be
possessed by all target environments. Information describing each target
environment is placed in configuration files, allowing a single set of
Poet executables to be used for all target environments. Comparing Poet's
performance to XPVM, the standard visualisation tool for PVM executions,
reveals that this target-system independence does not impose a
performance penalty.
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