Execution flow shape compression for aggregate data reporting in an application manager

Data relating to execution flows at a computer system is compressed and aggregated across multiple execution flows by categorizing each execution flow into an execution flow shape. The execution flows may represent sequences of software components that are invoked. The execution flow shapes are developed by observing the execution flows at the computer system and applying lossy compression rules, such as representing multiple iterations of a loop as a single iteration, skipping certain types of software components, such as those having a specified call stack depth, treating some of the software components as being optional, and ignoring recursive calls by the software components. The aggregation and compression allow the information from all execution flows to be combined into a small enough data set that can be reported without consuming unduly large processing overhead while still preserving as many of the interesting aspects of the execution flows as possible.