In my previous post, I showed how you can run the NB-bundled sample PHP application, AirAlliance. When you are developing PHP applications in Solaris/OpenSolaris, you can use DTrace to debug your applications.

I have written a short write-up explaining how you can trace the AirAlliance sample application using DTrace in OpenSolaris 2008.05. But the information is applicable to any PHP application you run on Solaris/OpenSolaris.

Read on.

In NetBeans, you can use the DTrace plug-in to analyze the performance of your PHP applications. A DTrace provider for PHP that adds probes to function entry and exit points has been available through Cool Stack. The support is also provided through Web Stack, if you are using SXDE 1/08.

To get started, follow these tutorials:
1.Configure NetBeans for DTrace.
2.Get PHP DTrace Extension.

Once you are done with the steps provided in the above articles, start your Apache web server and check the probes.

bash-3.2# dtrace -l | grep php

17952    php1895         dtrace.so       php_dtrace_execute function-entry
17953    php1895         dtrace.so       php_dtrace_execute_internal function-entry
17954    php1895         dtrace.so       php_dtrace_execute function-return
17955    php1895         dtrace.so       php_dtrace_execute_internal function-return
17956    php1896         dtrace.so       php_dtrace_execute function-entry
......
......

I'm running a simple PHP application that has some function calls. Go to the DTrace window in the NetBeans IDE and start the

php_flowtime.d

script.



Here is my output. The output shows which function is being invoked and the invoke time.



My example has only a few SOAP calls. If you have a complex application with DB calls, this script will be useful to analyze the performance bottlenecks in your application.

D-Light Tutorial

Project D-Light is a plug-in for Sun Studio 12. The plug-in offers a variety of instrumentation that takes advantage of the DTrace debugging and performance analysis functionality in the Solaris Operating System.

Project D-Light System Requirements

Project D-Light currently only runs on the Solaris 10 OS and requires a DTrace enabled Java Runtime Environment, at least version 6. The Solaris Express Developer Edition 05/07 OS, which is available free of charge from http://developers.sun.com/solaris/downloads/solexpdev/, is the recommended platform to run the tool. To check your Solaris version, type cat /etc/release at a shell prompt.

 

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