The analysis and monitoring of DataFlow applications can be approached in a number of ways. They include:

The previous approaches are roughly ordered by increasing specificity and granularity of information. Generally, it is best to start looking at the system level, as constraints on system performance will necessarily be constraints for any application running on the system. This provides a general idea of the nature of the problem which can then guide investigation into JVM and application performance. In this way, you are not immediately overwhelmed by a wealth of information, struggling to find a clue to the solution in a large amount of data.

As discussed in Debugging Distributed Applications, when working with a distributed application, it is important to remember that multiple machines are involved in execution. Thus, multiple machines may need to be monitored and the data combined. However, the point that local execution can sometime illustrate the same issues as distributed execution is just as valid with respect to analyzing performance as it is with debugging.