Visualize Chart Execution with the Activity Profiler

The Activity Profiler allows you to examine the behavior of your Stateflow^® chart. When you enable the Activity Profiler, after simulation, your Stateflow chart is highlighted to show which states were entered, transitions were taken, or functions were executed during the time that the simulation is running, also known as the simulation time. Additionally, you can see the duration of time that was spent in each state. To adjust the simulation time, in the Simulation tab, change the Stop time number.

With the Activity Profiler, you can quickly

1. Assess the behavior of your chart.

2. View states and transitions of your chart that are never entered or taken.

The Activity Profiler is not supported in referenced models or with fast restart mode.

Debug with the Activity Profiler

You can use the Activity Profiler as a complement to the Stateflow debugger. With the Activity Profiler, you can immediately see areas in your chart that were never reached or were constantly active, which can result in a faster debugging process. Additionally, you can view atomic states to see how often they are entered and how often their corresponding transitions are taken. With this information, it is easier to identify transition logic issues and solve problem areas in your chart such as:

• Transitions that are taken too often and serve no purpose

• Charts that are activated too often and slow down performance, such as an unexpected loop

• A bottleneck, such as a controller state that has multiple incoming transitions

After finding the specific problem areas, you can then set breakpoints to debug your chart. Without the Activity Profiler, you would have to set many breakpoints within your chart to pinpoint the problem area.

Enable the Activity Profiler

To enable the Activity Profiler, in the Stateflow editor, in the Debug tab, click Activity Profiler. On the bottom of the Stateflow Editor, the Activity Profiler pane appears below your chart.

To show how each state, transition, and function is executed, click Run. In the Stateflow editor, your chart is highlighted to show how many times a state is entered, a transition is taken, or a function is executed. The Activity Profiler pane shows four columns: State, Duration, Duration Percentage, and Number of Entries.

The Activity Profiler pane remains empty any time that the simulation is running, or paused for debugging. Once the simulation is complete the Activity Profiler pane populates and the canvas highlighting appears.

The State column lists the states in your Stateflow chart, along with their child states. The Duration column displays the duration of time (in seconds) spent in each state during the simulation. The Duration Percentage column shows a bar that represents what percentage of the runtime was spent in each state in relation to the parent chart. The Number of Entries column is the number of times each state was entered during simulation time.

You can also hover over a state or transition to see this data.

After running the simulation, you can toggle the highlighting and the Activity Profiler table off and on. In the Debug tab, open the Activity Profiler drop-down.

To turn off the canvas highlighting, clear Canvas Highlight. To turn off the Activity Profiler table, clear Table View.

Activity Profiler Preferences

The Activity Profiler is customizable. You have the option to highlight specific group of objects in the chart or change the color scheme. Specifying the highlighting allows you to focus on only one area. Changing the color scheme can help you visualize the data in different ways.

Highlighting Options

To change the highlighting options, in the Activity Profiler table, select the Activity Profiler preferences drop-down menu . Under Canvas Highlight Options, you can choose to enable highlighting for:

• States

• Transitions

• Functions

This is a global setting. If you change this setting in one model, all other models will only appear this way.

Color Scheme Options

The Stateflow Activity Profiler allows you to configure how to view the Activity Profiler through different color schemes. To change the color scheme, select the Activity Profiler preferences drop-down menu . Under Color Scheme, select a color. You can choose from the following color schemes:

• Blue

• Red

• Green

• HotCold

• Autumn

• Cool

• Jet

• Parula

The table at the top of the Activity Profiler table shows how the colors appear on the map.

This legend for the Blue scheme shows how the color becomes gradually darker as the state is entered more often.

HotCold is a highlighting scheme that is used to visualize the top 80% and low 20% of objects in a Stateflow chart.

The legend for HotCold shows how states or transitions that are entered: 0% to 20% relative to the parent chart are highlighted blue. States that are entered 80% to 100% are highlighted in red.

In this chart, you can see that the states upshifting, downshifting, and first were active for 20% or less of the total runtime. The states gear_state, selection_state, and steady_state were all active for 80% or more of the runtime. The states second and third were active between 20 and 80% of the runtime. The state fourth was not entered at all and remains not highlighted.

Explore

To view only subcharts and their child states, in the Activity Profiler table, right-click on the subchart name and select Explore. The Activity Profiler table adjusts to only include data about that subchart and its child states. Once you select the subchart as the current scope for the Activity Profiler pane, the duration percentage is in relation to the selected subchart.

Related Topics

• Manage Symbols in the Stateflow Editor
• Detect Common Modeling Errors During Simulation
• Set Data Properties