Efficiently computing derived performance data

The problem of generating instrumentation that efficiently computes derived performance data of program execution is examined. The instrumentation computes these derived data at run time as the directly accessible data are collected. It tests conditions defined on the collected data and eliminates the data that do not satisfy the stated conditions, thus avoiding recording of irrelevant data. This problem is examined in terms of generating instrumentation for computing the answers to monitoring questions. The solution is based on the use of temporal conditions defined on the events in the questions to determine which data to record and to be used as relevance run time filters on the events producing those data