Exploring Memory Analysis Views > Exploring the Instances View > Understanding the Instances View
The Instances view consists of a horizontal bar chart and a table.
The Investigate By drop-down list above the chart allows you to choose which metric should be used to determine the top five categories. The options are the same as the columns in the table:
It is important to keep in mind that the option you choose from this list affects not only the Instances view, but also subsequent views. If you cannot access a view or you do not see the data you expect to see in a subsequent view, it may be due to the Investigate by option that you chose in the Instances view.
The following table lists some examples of how to use the Investigate By options.
Some views only display certain types of data. For example, the Merged Allocation Points and Call Traces views display only use case or garbage data. You will not be able to access these views when Investigate By is set to Heap Count or Heap Memory, or when the selected class does not have any use case or garbage instances.
The bar chart in the Instances view illustrates the percentage of instances in each of the categories that are listed in the legend to the left of the chart. Hovering over a segment of the chart displays a popup showing the number of instances in or memory used by that category (see above).
You can drill down in a category by clicking either
a section in the chart or the corresponding category in the legend.
As you drill down to more detailed information, the chart and table
refresh to show only the instances in that category. You can click the
back and forward
toolbar buttons to move backward
and forward through operations you have already performed, or you can
click the down arrow beside either button and go directly to any of
the other operations that you have performed (as shown below).
Figure 1 Navigating the back/forward history
You can sort the table by any of the columns. The text field above the table allows you to filter the classes that are listed in the table. See Filtering Data in the Instances View for details.