VMS Help V73 Features, Programming Features, Visual Threads Version 2.1 (Alpha)  *Conan The Librarian (sorry for the slow response - running on an old VAX)

    Visual Threads is a unique tool that lets you debug and
    analyze multithreaded applications. You can use Visual Threads
    to automatically diagnose common problems associated with
    multithreading including deadlock, mutex, and thread usage
    errors. Also, you can use Visual Threads to monitor the thread-
    related performance of an application, helping you to identify
    bottlenecks or locking granularity problems. Visual Threads
    helps you identify problem areas in an application even if the
    application does not show specific symptoms.

    Visual Threads includes the following features:

    o  Collects detailed information about significant thread-related
       state changes ("events").

    o  Analyzes common threading problems automatically based on
       predefined rules applied to the event stream.

    o  Rule customization for application-specific parameters and
       actions.

    o  Automatic statistics gathering, by sampling the event stream.

    o  Categories of analysis: data protection errors (race
       conditions), deadlocks, programming errors, lock activity,
       performance.

    o  Graphical visualization of the frequency of thread-related
       events and thread state, snapshots of historical program
       state, and object-specific graphs for each collected
       statistic.

    o  Lock activity profiling to reveal where various types of lock
       activity are occurring in your application, including: Number
       of Locks, Contended Locks, Locked Time, and Wait Time. Lock
       activity is collected and displayed for individual locks.

    o  Summarizes the program run and provides reports.

    o  Threads Snapshot view displays the historical state of threads
       represented at specific times in the main thread overview
       graph.

    o  Find and Filter support in the Event Window to allow you to
       quickly locate particular events.

    o  CPU Utilization Window shows the CPU percentage used by each
       thread.

    o  Thread Transitions Window depicts each state change for a
       detailed view.

    For more information about these features, refer to the Visual
    Threads product documentation, which is available on the OpenVMS
    Alpha CD-ROM in directory [VISUAL_THREADS_021], or by using the
    online Help system.