An application using the
Performance Metrics Application Programming Interface (PMAPI)
may manipulate several concurrent contexts,
each associated with a source of performance metrics, e.g. pmcd(1)
on some host, or an archive log of performance metrics as created by
pmlogger(1).
Calling
pmDupContext
will
replicate the current PMAPI context,
returning a handle for the new context that may be used with subsequent
calls to
pmUseContext(3).
Once created, the duplicated context and the original context have independent
existence, and so their instance profiles and
collection time (relevant only for archive contexts)
may be independently varied.
The newly replicated context becomes the current context.