The Collector gathers performance or coverage data from your
program at run time and writes that data to a performance data
file. To use the Collector, you must:
1. Compile your sources with the "/DEBUG" qualifier;
This puts all the necessary symbolic information PCA needs
into the object file.
2. The following steps specifies the PCA Collector as your
program's "debugger":
i Link your program with the "/DEBUG" qualifier;
ii Define the logical name LIB$DEBUG as PCA$COLLECTOR;
3. Run your program;
4. Enter the "GO" command at the PCAC> prompt.
The Collector will transfer control to your program just like
the debugger does, and will store the data in a data file
named your-image-name.PCA.
The following example illustrates the DCL commands required to
invoke the Collector on the FORTRAN program PRIMES.FOR:
$ FORTRAN/DEBUG PRIMES.FOR
$ LINK/DEBUG PRIMES.OBJ
$ DEFINE LIB$DEBUG PCA$COLLECTOR
$ RUN PRIMES.EXE
Performance and Coverage Analyzer for OpenVMS Version V5.1
PCAC>
When you get the Collector prompt (PCAC>), you have successfully
invoked the Collector and are ready to enter Collector commands.
To collect PC-sampling data, it is sufficient to enter the GO
command at this point. The Collector will create a performance
data file with the default name "image-name.PCA", where image-
name is the name of the executable image being run. This file
will contain the collected data and all symbol information needed
by the Analyzer.
PCAC> GO
%PCA-I-DEFDATFIL, set datafile required in this context,
creating '[]PRIMES.PCA'
%PCA-I-BEGINCOL, data collection begins
%PCA-I-DATADEFPC, defaulting to collecting PC sampling data
%PCA-I-ENDCOL, data collection ends
$
For more information, enter HELP at the PCAC> prompt.