The Open System Trace (OST) trace format for data transfer is an open, platform-independent solution that is easily integrated into the software development process.
The OST Application Programming Interface (API) defines a set of macros to instrument traces to the source code. The underlying OST Framework then sends the instrumented traces out of the device. Before code compilation, traces are compiled by the trace compiler. The trace compiler assigns each trace a unique identifier, which is sent together with trace parameters. The trace compiler also generates decode file for decoding traces (the decoding process can be seen to translate identifier back to text).
The benefits of using OST include: