Profiling

Profiling, the extrapolation of information about something, based on known qualities, may refer specifically to:

See also

Profiling (information science)

In information science, profiling refers to the process of construction and application of profiles generated by computerized data analysis.

This involves the use of algorithms or other mathematical techniques that allow the discovery of patterns or correlations in large quantities of data, aggregated in databases. When these patterns or correlations are used to identify or represent people, they can be called profiles. Other than a discussion of profiling technologies or population profiling, the notion of profiling in this sense is not just about the construction of profiles, but also concerns the application of group profiles to individuals, e. g., in the cases of credit scoring, price discrimination, or identification of security risks (Hildebrandt & Gutwirth 2008) (Elmer 2004).

Profiling is not simply a matter of computerized pattern-recognition; it enables refined price-discrimination, targeted servicing, detection of fraud, and extensive social sorting. Real-time machine profiling constitutes the precondition for emerging socio-technical infrastructures envisioned by advocates of ambient intelligence,autonomic computing (Kephart & Chess 2003) and ubiquitous computing (Weiser 1991).

Profiling (computer programming)

In software engineering, profiling ("program profiling", "software profiling") is a form of dynamic program analysis that measures, for example, the space (memory) or time complexity of a program, the usage of particular instructions, or the frequency and duration of function calls. Most commonly, profiling information serves to aid program optimization.

Profiling is achieved by instrumenting either the program source code or its binary executable form using a tool called a profiler (or code profiler). Profilers may use a number of different techniques, such as event-based, statistical, instrumented, and simulation methods.

Gathering program events

Profilers use a wide variety of techniques to collect data, including hardware interrupts, code instrumentation, instruction set simulation, operating system hooks, and performance counters. Profilers are used in the performance engineering process.

Use of profilers

The output of a profiler may be: