• Select snapshots
  The hot spot comparison compares two snapshot files. In this step, you select the first and the second snapshot file for the comparison. The combo boxes contain all snapshot files that have been added to the snapshot selector. You can use the same snapshot file for the first and second snapshot file, in which case the thread selections in the next step must be different.
• Thread selection
  In this step, you choose for which threads the comparison should be made. By default all threads are selected, you can restrict the thread selection to single thread groups or single threads.
• View parameters
  In this steps you can select thread status, aggregation level and hot spot type, just as for the hot spots view. In addition, you can choose whether to calculate differences of total call times or of average call times (total time divided by invocation count). Note that if "Sampling" was used as the call tree collection method, the invocation count is not available and this setting will not have any effect.

• the name of the hot spot
• the inherent time in the second snapshot file minus the inherent time in the first snapshot file
• the invocations in the second snapshot file minus the invocations in the first snapshot file

The second column incorporates a bidirectional bar chart. Increases are painted in red and to the right, while decreases are painted in green and to the left. In the view settings dialog you can choose whether you want this bar chart to display absolute changes or the percentage of the change. The other value is displayed in parentheses. This setting also determines how this column is sorted.