Output Formats

The following output formats are currently supported by Flent:

Plot output (-f plot)

Output test data as one of a series of graphical plots of timeseries data or summarised as a CDF plot. Each test supplies a number of different plots; the list of plots for a given test is output by the --list-plots switch (which must be supplied along with a test name).

The plots are drawn by matplotlib, and can be displayed on the screen interactively (requires a graphical display), or output to a file in svg, pdf, ps and png formats. Using the -o switch turns out file output (the file format is inferred from the file name), while not supplying the switch turns on the interactive plot viewer.

Tabulated output (-f csv and -f org_table)

These formats output the numeric data in a tabulated format to be consumed by other applications. The csv output format is a comma-separated output that can be imported into e.g. spreadsheets, while org_table outputs a tabulated output in the table format supported by Emacs org mode. The data is output in text format to standard output, or written to a file if invoked with the -o parameter.

Statistics output (-f stats)

This output format outputs various statistics about the test data, such as total bandwidth consumed, and various statistical measures (min/max/mean/median/std dev/variance) for each data source specified in the relevant test (this can include some data sources not includes on plots). The data is output in text format to standard output, or written to a file if invoked with the -o parameter.

Metadata output (-f metadata)

This output format outputs the test metadata as pretty-printed JSON (also suitable for human consumption). It is output as a list of objects, where each object corresponds to the metadata of one test. Mostly useful for inspecting metadata of stored data files.