Meaning – The term instrumentation, refers to either
(a) monitoring functions that provide performance and other information to a management system or
(b) the use of monitoring functions to provide performance and other information to a management system.
In the context of computer programming, instrumentation refers to the measure of a product’s performance, diagnosing errors, and writing trace information. Instrumentation can be of two types: source instrumentation and binary instrumentation.
Instrumentation is limited by execution coverage. If the program never reaches a particular point of execution, then instrumentation at that point collects no data.
Some types of instrumentation may cause a dramatic increase in execution time. This may limit the application of instrumentation to debugging contexts.
Example of usage – “If a word processor application is instrumented, but the user never activates the print feature, then the instrumentation can say nothing about the routines which are used exclusively by the printing feature.”
