Question

I’ve been searching all over for a consistent and clear explanation of what ‘self time’ actually refers to in the VisualVM context and how does it differ to ‘self time (cpu)’. Also does ‘self time [%]’ refer to self time or self time cpu.

There doesn’t appear to be much documentation on this or at least I haven’t found it. So any thoughts/input will be appreciated.

Answer 1

• Self Time is a wall-clock time spent in the method itself (includes time waiting/sleeping).
• Self Time (CPU) is a time processor time, so it does NOT include time spent waiting, sleeping, etc.
• Both columns do NOT include time spent in methods invoked from that method.
• Both Self Time and Self Time (CPU) in the sampler are approximation of actual data.
• Self Time [%] refers to one of the two selected Self Time [(CPU)] columns.