Monitoring Application Performance on the .NET Compact Framework Part III - Version 2 performance counters (Part I: Loader counters)

Last time, I talked about the performance counters available in version 1 of the .NET Compact Framework.  Today, I'd like to talk about a few of the performance counters available in version 2 of the .NET Compact Framework.

As I mentioned in part 1 (Enabling performance counters), the data collected is written to a file in the device's root folder when the application exits.  In version 1 of the .NET Compact Framework, this file was called mscoree.stat.  In version 2, the .NET Compact Framework the file's name is derived from your application (ex: WebCrawler.stat).

The following table lists all of the performance counters available in version 2 of the .NET Compact Framework.

As you can see in the above table, there are quite a few performance counters available in version 2 of the .NET Compact Framework.  Compared to version 1, the counters are more detailed, provide greater insight on the operation of the runtime and allow for a better understanding of application performance issues.

Considering the length of the previous post and the increased number of performance counters available in version 2, I will be discussing the new counters by their categories.  With each new installment, I will re-post the above table, along with an example file, and highlight the counters being discussed by setting the background color to yellow.

The statistics file includes running totals, the most recent value (last datum), count (n), average (mean), minimum and maximum values for the counters. I've included an example file at the end of this post. For counters where a given column is not relevant, a hyphen (-) is logged.

I will use the following format to describe each counter.
Counter name
Brief description of the counter
Discussion of the contents of relevant columns (total, last datum, n, mean, min, max)
Any additional comments relating to the counter

Loader Counters
The first category of counters that I will cover are related to the loader.  The loader is the portion of the runtime which is responsible for resolving and loading the components (assemblies, classes, etc) referenced by your application.

Total Program Run Time (ms)
The length of time your application ran (from the start of the Common Language Runtime).
total: Time in milliseconds

App Domains Created
The number of App Domains created in the application's process.
total: Running total of created App Domains

App Domains Unloaded
The number of App Domains that were unloaded during the run time of the application.
total: Running total of unloaded App Domains

Assemblies Loaded
The number of assemblies loaded (across all App Domains) on behalf of the application.
total: Running total of loaded assemblies

Classes Loaded
The number of classes loaded (across all App Domains) during the run time of the application.
total: Running total of loaded classes

Methods Loaded
The total number of methods loaded (across all App Domains) during the run time of the application.
total: Running total of loaded methods

If you are comparing the version 1 and version 2 counters, you may have noticed that version 2 no longer collects the Execution Engine Startup Time.  Since applications cannot impact the Execution Engine's startup time, the counter is not relevant to application writers and was removed from version 2 of the .NET Compact Framework.

Example statistics file
The following is an example statistics file (formerly known as mscoree.stat) that shows the data collected by running a simple application. 

As with the counters table, above, I have highlighted the counters discussed here with a yellow background.  As this series continues, I will re-use this same example file and highlight the counters discussed in each post.

Take care,
-- DK

[Edit: update counter table to fix errors]
[Edit: post title]

Disclaimer(s):
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.