Populate a column's description and short description from each other - #442
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Jing Xia (xj-ms)
requested review from
helenkzhang,
Jayson Maxson (jmaxson-ms),
malavshah11 and
Tristan Gibeau (trgibeau)
as code owners
August 11, 2026 00:33
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Pull request overview
This PR improves the usability of column descriptions in the SDK by ensuring ColumnMetadata.Description and ColumnMetadata.ShortDescription remain helpful even when plugin authors only set one of them, improving how descriptions appear in both tooltips and configuration UIs.
Changes:
- Auto-populates
ShortDescriptionfromDescription(including truncation + ellipsis when long). - When
ShortDescriptionis explicitly set, it backfillsDescriptionif it was effectively unset (defaulted toName). - Adds unit tests and updates author-facing documentation to describe the two description fields and the new defaulting behavior.
Show a summary per file
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| src/Microsoft.Performance.SDK/Processing/ColumnMetadata.cs | Adds short-description derivation + backfill behavior and makes Description internally settable. |
| src/Microsoft.Performance.SDK.Tests/ColumnMetadataTests.cs | Adds coverage for defaulting, truncation, and backfill semantics. |
| documentation/Using-the-SDK/Building-a-table.md | Documents Description vs ShortDescription and updates guidance for deprecating columns. |
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- Files reviewed: 3/3 changed files
- Comments generated: 2
- Review effort level: Lite
Jayson Maxson (jmaxson-ms)
approved these changes
Aug 11, 2026
malavshah11
approved these changes
Aug 11, 2026
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All existing Xperf columns use either Description or ShortDescription. These 2 properties are basically used interchangeably in reality.
As a result, depending on which one is set, column descriptions are often only available either as tooltips or inside the table config dialog in WPA, but never both.
While plugin authors are responsible for providing both of them, one improvement we can do in SDK is to provide default values for them, so that they remain useful even if only one of them is set --- a short description can be the description, and a description can a short description after truncation. Plugin authors can still overwrite the default values if they want, and they are encouraged to do so