Visualizing Request-Flow Comparison
Distributed systems are complex to develop and administer, and performance
problem diagnosis is particularly challenging. When performance degrades, the
problem might be in any of the system's many components or could be a result of
poor interactions among them. Recent research efforts have created tools that
automatically localize the problem to a small number of potential culprits, but
effective visualizations are needed to help developers understand and explore
their results. This paper compares side-by-side, diff, and animation-based
approaches for visualizing the results of one proven automated localization
technique called request-flow comparison. Via a 26-person user study, which
included real distributed systems developers, we identify the unique benefits
that each approach provides for different usage modes and problem types.