Profiling: The process of collecting statistical information about runtime characteristics of program runs.

Tracing: The process of supervising a program run and storing events happening sorted by a timestap in a output file, the Trace.

Trace: A sequence of timestamped events that occurred while tracing a program run. Its size is typically linear to the execution time of the program run.

Profile Data File: A file containing data measured in a profile experiment (or part of) or produced by postprocessing a trace. Its size is typically linear to the code size of the program.

Profile Data Part (incorrectly used also: Trace Part): Data from a profile data file.

Profile Experiment: A program run supervised by a profiling tool, producing possibly multiple profile data files from parts and/or threads of the run.

Profile Project: A configuration for profile experiments used for one program which has to be profiled, perhaps in multiple versions. Comparisons of profile data typically only makes sense between profile data produced in experiments of one profile project.

Cost Entity: An abstract item related to source code to which event counts can be attributed. Dimensions for cost entities are code location (e.g. source line, function), data location (e.g. accessed data type, data object), execution location (e.g. thread, process), and tuples or triples of the aforementioned positions (e.g. calls, object access from statement, evicted data from cache).

Event Type: The kind of event of which costs can be attributed to a cost entity. There exist real event types and inherited event types.

Real Event Type: A event type that can be measured by a tool. This needs the existence of a sensor for the given event type.

Inherited Event Type: A virtual event type only visible in the visualization which is defined by a formula to be calculated from real event types.

Event Costs: Sum of events of some event type occurring while the execution is related to some cost entity. The cost is attributed to the entity.