Navigating the Performance Data

The performance data contains information for a variable number of object types, instances per object, and counters per object type. Therefore, the number and size of blocks in the performance data varies. To ensure that your application correctly receives the performance data, you must use the offsets included in the performance structures to navigate through the data. Every offset is a count of bytes relative to the structure containing it.

For an example that navigates the registry, see Displaying Object, Instance, and Counter Names.

Note  The reason the system uses offsets instead of pointers is that pointers are not valid across process boundaries. The addresses that the process that installs the counters would store would not be valid for the process that reads the counters.