Admittedly, this slide is somewhat forward looking. The important truth of the matter is that there is a significant effort on the part of all dynamic trace tool creators to improve the number of providers and ultimately the number of probe points. As this number grows, the dynamic tracing tool becomes more and more a focus of those looking to monitor a Unix system.

By comparison, the approach taken by Sun with DTrace is to make it a single point for all performance event related data. To be true, this vision is short of reality as well, but the approach is one that makes these tools much more usable as data can be collected and managed through one tool. This central focus allows for two key concepts; first, that performance events can be closely correlated and second, that the administrator does not need to move from one tool to another as she diagnoses a problem.