Using XML in a Software Diagnostic Tool

Published

December 6, 1999

Author(s)

Alden A. Dima

Abstract

Many development tools such as execution tracing tools generate a large amount of text output. The large quantity of text make it hard for the user to sort through and make sense of the output. In addition, the output is often formatted in a manner that makes automated filtering inconvenient.One such is VMView (http://www.nist.gov/vmview), a diagnostic tool that can be embedded at routine into the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). It is currently under development at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. VMView serves as a means to capture the internal state changes of the JVM during the execution of Java applications and applets as an execution trace, which can then be analyzed.We will discuss our experience with converting this diagnostic tool to produce and use an Extensible Markup Language-based output. The use of an XML-based output format for software diagnostic tools solves several problems. It gives the output a convenient format suitable for input to a filtering tool - allowing the user to more effectively manage the data complexity. It also allows for the separation of the data from its presentation - something that is more difficult to accomplish with the standard text formatting techniques used by most tools.

Citation

XML Conference

Pub Type

Journals

Keywords

extensible markup language, Java, software diagnostics, XML

Citation

Dima, A. (1999), Using XML in a Software Diagnostic Tool, XML Conference (Accessed October 31, 2024)