Comments Tool Window

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Message Analyzer provides the Comments Tool Window to enable you to add a comment to any message that you select in any Analysis Grid viewer instance. This includes filtered views that display a subset of a full set of trace results.

You typically configure comments to contain important reminders or other information snippets that are significant to data analysis, so that you or others can quickly locate them when resuming data analysis. Therefore, when sharing a trace with commented messages, it will be easier for others to search for and focus on any issues you have flagged with comments. To configure a comment, you can access the Comments window as an item in the Windows submenu that is accessible from the global Message Analyzer Tools menu.

Configuring a Comment

You can add a single comment to any message that you select in the Analysis Grid viewer. You can also add multiple comments to a single message that is selected in the Analysis Grid viewer, which includes both top-level and child messages. However, if you add one or more comments to a group of selected messages, the comment/s will be attached to the last selected message only. After you display the Comments window, select a particular message in the Analysis Grid viewer that you want to comment. You can then configure the comment by using the following features of the Comments window in the indicated manner:

  • Add — click the Add button on the toolbar of the Comments window to display the comments input configuration. To configure multiple comments, click the Add button successively as required.

  • Title — enter a title for your comment in this text box.

  • Author — your user name and the date-time for the comment entry are specified in this text box by default, but you can change it as required.

  • Comment — specify the text of your comment in the text box below the Author text box.

  • Save Changes — clicking the Save Changes icon enables you to save the specified comment configuration.

  • Cancel Edit — clicking the Cancel Edit icon enables you to remove the currently specified comment configuration. If you click the Cancel Edit icon, it changes to the Delete Comment icon and the Save Changes icon changes to the Edit Comment icon.

    At this point, you can either resume editing or delete the comment configuration altogether. If you click the Delete Comment icon, the Delete Comment dialog displays to confirm the deletion. If you click the Edit Comment icon, an empty comment configuration displays to enable you to create your comment configuration as required. However, if you happen to have an existing comment selected, clicking the Edit Comment button opens the comment configuration for editing.

Searching for Commented Messages

To search for messages that contain configured comments, click the Previous and Next directional search controls against a set of trace results to find them. You can also use the keyboard left or right arrow keys to select either the Previous or Next search control and then use the keyboard ENTER key successively to search a trace for comments. Note that for large traces, the searches might not be instantaneous. Also, when the search in a specified direction reaches the last message containing a comment, the search simply resumes in round-robin fashion, should you continue searching in the current direction.

Note

If you added a comment to a child message and the origins tree containing the child message is not expanded in the Analysis Grid viewer while you are searching for commented messages, only the top-level message or operation containing the commented child message will be highlighted in the Analysis Grid viewer. Otherwise, if the child messages are in the expanded state in the Analysis Grid viewer, each child message in the stack will be highlighted in succession until the message is reached where the comment was originally configured.

Saving and Loading Trace Files Containing Comments

If you want to save comments that you have configured in a message collection, you can only do so by saving your messages in the Message Analyzer native .matp format. You can save a message collection that contains comments by using the Save/Export Session dialog; however, you must click the Save As button rather than the Export button to facilitate the save; otherwise, your comments will not be saved in a .cap file which is the result of saving with the Export command. When you reload a saved message collection containing comments, for example through Open, Recent Files, or a Data Retrieval Session, the Comments window automatically opens when Message Analyzer is finished loading the data. Thereafter, you can use the Previous and Next buttons in the Comments window to locate the associated commented messages in the Analysis Grid viewer. In this way, you or another user can navigate through all of your commented messages.