I hope you’ve already tried out Performance Data Investigator (PDI) to analyze your performance data. If so, you may be ready to modify or change some of the provided charts and tables for your analysis preferences. Today, I’ll highlight how you can use Design Mode to customize charts.
If you haven’t tried PDI yet, check out Dawn’s article “Getting Started with the Performance Data Investigator” and then come back to read on customizing the perspectives.
In order to customize a perspective, you’ll need to make sure that you have Design Mode enabled. With design mode enabled, additional advanced edit features become available. You’ll be able to edit and save perspectives into any unlocked content package. To enable Design Mode, go into Investigate Data, select the Options button which appears at the bottom of the Perspective List panel to get to the Options panel. On the Options panel, click on the Enable Design Mode checkbox and select OK.
You’ll want to create a new content package to have a place to save your modified or created perspectives that will be visible and usable by others on your system.
Start by displaying the locked perspective you want to modify (with any valid collection for that perspective). Then select one of the Edit buttons available to get to the Edit Perspective or Edit Viewpanel.
From the Edit Perspective panel you can edit the perspective information (Name and Description), add a view or select a view to edit.
From the Edit View panel, you will see the specifications that make up the view and can be modified (Name, Type, DataSet (SQL), Drilldown options, Chart properties such as DataSeries and Thresholds).
By selecting ModifySQL, you can view and make changes to the SQL that creates the data set. This information could be helpful to an experienced SQL developer.
By selecting the Edit button for a Data Series, you can make changes to how the data will be displayed for the chart.
Editing the data series allows you to view and change the way the performance collection is charted. You will be able to modify some of the specifications such as the range and type of chart (bar or line, stacked or clustered), color and pattern choices, breakdown dimension and tooltips.
After editing a locked perspective, use the Save As button to save the changes into a new location. Select the new package created and change the name if desired. Click on Save. When you return to the Perspective List panel, you will see the newly saved perspective.
The capability to edit perspectives in Performance Data Investigator is a great way to give you exactly what you need for analyzing performance data. For a more in-depth description of editing, go to the IBM Systems Magazine article or developerWorks iZone IBM i Performance Data Investigator – Edit Perspectives article.
This week’s blog article was written by Lora Powell. Lora is a member of the Performance Tools team in the IBM i development lab and works on the Performance Data Investigator. Thanks, Lora!
This blog post was originally published on IBMSystemsMag.com and is reproduced here by permission of IBM Systems Media.