Hierarchical Profiler - DBMS_HPROF

Dbms_hprof package reports dynamic execution profile of the plsql program organised by subprogram calls. This seperately accounts plsql and sql calls. Also provides subprogram level execution summary. It has two components - data collection and  analyzer. Data collection has apis to turn hierarchical profiling on and off. It produces raw profiler output. Analyzer processes raw profiler output and store the data to database tables. Hierarchical profiler is aided by plshprof utility which takes the raw profiler output as input and creates html reports.

Initial setup:

By default dbms_hprof is installed in oracle 11g. One can check if it is installed by running

Desc dbms_hprof

If it is not installed, run the script dbmshptab.sql  (inside rdbms/admin folder in oracle home path) in the schema one need to profile the units.

conn user/password

@/home/oracle/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_2/rdbms/admin/dbmshptab.sql

This script will create three tables :

- dbmshp_function_info

- dbmshp_parent_child_info

- dbmshp_runs

To do hierarchical profiling using dbms_hprof, the schema need to have execute privilege on DBMS_HPROF package and write access to a directory object referred in start_profiling procedure.

Eg: Giving access to HR schema:

GRANT EXECUTE ON dbms_hprof  TO HR;

CREATE DIRECTORY PLSQL_HPROF AS '/home/oracle/plsql_hprof';

GRANT ALL ON DIRECTORY PLSQL_HPROF TO HR;

Process of Hierarchical profiling involves starting the profiler, executing plsql program code and  stopping profiler. To start profiler, dbms_hprof offers start_profiling procedure. To stop stop_profiling procedure is used.

Example

Create or replace procedure hprof1 is

Begin

Calc_days(sysdate - 1000);

End;

begin

dbms_hprof.start_profiling( location => 'PLSQL_HPROF', filename=>'Run1.trc');

hprof1;

dbms_hprof.stop_profiling;

end;

This will generate raw profiler data in file Run1.trc in the directory referred by PLSQL_HPROF directory object. Raw profiler output is like:

P#V PLSHPROF Internal Version 1.0

P#! PL/SQL Timer Started

P#C PLSQL."HR"."CALC_DAYS"::7."CALC_DAYS"#c0e1380d4054eb50 #1

P#X 191

P#C PLSQL."SYS"."DBMS_OUTPUT"::11."PUT_LINE"#5892e4d73b579470 #109

P#X 2

P#R

P#X 6

P#C PLSQL."SYS"."DBMS_OUTPUT"::11."PUT_LINE"#5892e4d73b579470 #109

P#X 1

P#R

P#X 5

P#C PLSQL."SYS"."DBMS_OUTPUT"::11."PUT_LINE"#5892e4d73b579470 #109

P#X 1

Since the raw profiler data is hard to decipher, one needs to analyze it using analyze function. It takes trace file location and name as input and returns runid. It writes the profiled data into the database tables.

Example:

 declare

 runid number;

 begin

 runid := dbms_hprof.analyze(location=> 'PLSQL_HPROF' , filename=> 'Run1.trc');

 dbms_output.put_line(' Run ID = ' ||runid);

 end;

One can query the database tables for finding information on profiling data using below queries:

Below sql gives runid:

SELECT runid,  run_timestamp,total_elapsed_time,run_comment FROM   dbmshp_runs ORDER BY runid;

From below sql we can find symbolid of our top level procedure call.

SELECT symbolid, owner, module, type, function FROM   dbmshp_function_info WHERE  runid = 1  ORDER BY symbolid;

Using symbolid, we can get the hierarchical information using below:

SELECT RPAD(' ', level*2, ' ') || fi.owner || '.' || fi.module AS name, fi.function, pci.subtree_elapsed_time, pci.function_elapsed_time, pci.calls FROM   dbmshp_parent_child_info pci  JOIN dbmshp_function_info fi ON pci.runid = fi.runid AND pci.childsymid = fi.symbolid  WHERE  pci.runid = 1

CONNECT BY PRIOR childsymid = parentsymid

START WITH pci.parentsymid = 2;

PLSHPROF utility:

plshprof utility takes a trace file and generates various HTML reports.

Example:

$plshprof -output run1 run1.trc

This generates a set of files with name starting with run1. Also one can generate difference between two runs of hierarchical profiling by supplying raw profiler outputs to plshprof utility.

Example:

$plshprof –output diff <Trace_file1> <Trace_File2>

Reference

1. Oracle 11g Advanced application developers guide
2. Oracle 11g PLSQL packages and types reference.
3. Www.oracle-base.com