Data Display

5.6 Filtering for Data of Interest

To zero in on specific data, it is helpful to eliminate information that is not currently of interest from the view graph. This filtering of the displayed data does not affect what data is stored in the event log, which is determined by the selections you make in the Collection Configuration dialog box. There are four ways to filter the data that is displayed in the view graph:

Task pop-up menu

Context Attributes dialog box

Hide non-executing states button

Filter Events/States dialog box

Specify Which Tasks to Display

Task pop-up menu

Display the task pop-up menu by right-clicking on any task name on the view graph (see Figure 5-5). You can eliminate tasks from the display one by one by bringing up the menu for each task and clicking on the task name where it appears on the menu. You can select Hide All or Expose All. If any tasks are hidden, the number of hidden tasks appears at the bottom right of the view graph and a sub-menu listing them appears when the cursor is over Expose. To show any hidden task, select it on this submenu.

Context Attributes dialog box

Selecting Attributes from the task pop-up menu displays the Context Attributes dialog box (see Figure 5-13). This dialog box allows you to show and hide tasks one at a time by checking or unchecking the box beside each task name or to highlight multiple tasks using SHIFT+CLICK and CTRL+CLICK and show or hide them as a group using the Change Visibility buttons. In addition, the Pattern box in the Context Attributes dialog box allows you to use regular expressions to simplify the selection process. For example, if your Context Attributes dialog box looks like Figure 5-13 and you want to hide all task contexts (in other words, all contexts whose names start with "t", type t* in the Pattern box and click Hide; all contexts starting with "t" will be unchecked and will be hidden as soon as you click OK.

Figure 5-13: Context Attributes Dialog Box

Hide Nonexecuting States

One way to simplify the view graph is not to display the state stipples for any tasks except the executing task. WindView provides the button which toggles the state stipple display on and off. You can also reach this function by selecting Hide Nonexecuting States in the View menu or by unchecking Nonexecuting States in the Filter Events/States dialog box (see Figure 5-14).

The Filter Events/States Dialog Box

The Filter Events/States dialog box (see Figure 5-14) provides the most comprehensive tools to tailor the view graph display. Access it by clicking the button or by selecting Filter Events from the View menu.

Figure 5-14: Filter Events/States Dialog Box

Events that will be displayed are shown in reverse video. To unselect them, click on them. In addition, you can add or remove the following items by checking or unchecking them:

UD Event IDs (the IDs of any user-defined events)

Nonexecuting States (state stipples for all tasks except the executing one)

Transition Lines (the lines that connect a previous context to the current context)

Interrupt Transitions (the lines that connect a previous context to an interrupt)

NOTE: If you collect a log at CSE level, the Nonexecuting States option is unavailable because the log does not contain this data.