URGENT: Problem using gprof on shared libraries

["Masaoud T. Moonim" <masaoud at mailandnews dot com>]

Hi,

    I wanted to profile the 'Xerces-C' suite from Apache using 'gprof'.
Xerces-C comes along with a shared library named 'libxerces-c1_3.so'.
I rebuilt this library with the '-pg' and '-g' options. I used this 
library with one of the samples ( this sample was also rebuilt with the 
'-pg' and '-g' compile/link time options ). The results of gprof did 
not have profiling information for function calls within the library, 
it only had profiling for function calls in the sample.

    Then I rebuilt the 'Xerces-C' as a static library (.a) with the 
'-pg' and '-g' options, and used this library with the same sample. 
This time gprof generated profiling information for all function 
calls ( even those within the static library ).

    I sent an email to Jay Fenlason explaining to him the above 
behaviour and he explained the behavior as follows :
 >"I suspect collecting profiling information across the shared
 >library interface is problematic at best (and impossible at worst).  
 >By the time gprof runs, there is no way for it to determine which 
 >shared libraries were loaded at what memory addresses, which means 
 >the memory addresses in its table of function call arcs cannot be 
 >translated back into function names."

I wanted to know the following :
  1. Is there any way I can use gprof to profile function calls 
     within shared libraries ? 
  2. Are there any tools/scripts that can be used to take the output 
     of gprof and generate a visual representation ?
  3. Is there a 'xgprof' or 'xprofiler' for linux ?
  4. Can the granularity for 'time' be reduced ?

Thanks and Regards
Masaoud

P.S.: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year