Contents

1  Barycentric Visualizer

Barry3 CPU	Barry3 Apdex	Barry4 Network

Barry3 CPU

Barry-3 displays CPU utilization for a 72-way multiprocessor running a network-based workload on ORACLE 10g. The barry-3 axes are:

• %user time (vertical upward increasing, red)
  
  
• %system time (left-right downward increasing, yellow)
  
  
• %idle (right-left downward increasing, blue)
  
  

At 12:36:46, the workload begins to ramp up starting at the lower left corner of the triangle; maximum idleness. Most of the CPUs (shown as colored dots) gradually make their way up the blue idle axis (decreasing idleness) to cluster around the region bounded by the 25% idle line, the 25% sys line and the 50% usr line. However, 3 CPUs peel off at around 10% usr time and rapidly migrate (rightward) to the 80-90% sys location; near the tip of the yellow arrow. These CPUs are dedicated to handling network traffic and other house-keeping. At 12:53:41, the workload completes and all the CPU dots rapidly return to the tip of the blue arrow as they become idle again. Some clean up continues as some of the CPUs are seen to run back and forth along the base of the Barry3 triangle (zero usr time) between idle and system time. The frame rate of 1 second corresponds to 10 seconds of real time, as shown in the clock display. (Data supplied with permission by Time Cook of Sun Microsystems.)

Barry3 Apdex

The Apdex Alliance is a group of companies collaborating to promote an application performance metric called Apdex. Apdex is a numerical measure of user satisfaction with the performance of enterprise applications, and reflects the effectiveness of IT investments in contributing to business objectives. The visualization here, shows both the Apdex index and its component categories can be displayed for multiple geographical locations simultaneously.

The location of each dot is determined by its percentage of satisfied (s), tolerating (t) and frustrated (f) counts. In this case, the unnormalized categorical data is binned according to:

• S: Samples < 4 seconds
  
  
• T: 4 seconds < Samples < 16 seconds
  
  
• F: Samples > 16 seconds
  
  

The Apdex response time measurements were collected from 5 different geographic locations (shown in the legend) over a period of 30 days. Data supplied with permission by Peter Sevcik of the Apdex Alliance. The gray background is superimposed to better display the colored dots.

This visualization concept was presented (PDF) at the 2007 Apdex Symposium.

Barry4 Network

This representation is an application of the 3-simplex depecting 4 network performance metrics in three dimensions for 1000 network segments or cloud of points. It is very clear, even without looking closely at the visual area, that the points cluster into 3 sub-clouds along certain viewing angles. This is the barycentric analog of the MacSpin example.

2  Pretty Damn Quick (PDQ)

• Description
  
  
• Manual
  
  
• Download
  
  

3  SigFigs: Significant Digits Calculator

• EXCEL/VBA
  
  
• Mathematica
  
  
• Perl
  
  

4  SigRound: Significant Rounding Calculator

• Perl