Method and Apparatus for Call Stack Sampling Using a Virtual Machine

A computer implemented method, apparatus, and computer usable program code for sampling call stack information. A flag associated with a target thread is set in a memory work area associated with a virtual machine in response to an interrupt. Monitoring for an event during execution of a plurality of threads created by the virtual machine. A determination is made as to whether the flag is set in response to an occurrence of the event. If the flag is set, the virtual machine makes a call out to a profiler which initiates sampling of the call stack information in response to the flag being set.