CHITRA93: A System to Model Ensembles of Trace Data

Abstract

CHITRA, a sanskrit word meaning a beautiful or pleasing picture, represents a new approach to understanding trace data generated by computer and communication systems. CHITRA can analyze any time series data, although its features are specifically tailored to trace data from computer and communication systems that we have studied over the years. Because a single trace file represents just a single observation may or may not be representative of the range of behavior that the system can manifest, CHITRA93 analyzes multiple trace files representing multiple observations. A collection of trace files is called an ensemble. CHITRA couples methods to visualize and statistically analyze ensembles, culminating in the construction of one or more models that fit the data in an ensemble. CHITRA addresses the potential state space explosion problem in a model by providing a set of transforms that aggregate or delete information from a trace file.