With YourKit Java Profiler 3.1, a tool for Java professionals, you can easily solve wide range of CPU and memory related performance problems in J2EE/J2SE applications.

Main changes in 3.1 from 3.0:

    * Solaris support
    * Eclipse 3.1 M2 support

Please visit http://www.yourkit.com to learn about the features and try a fully functional version of the profiler for free.

It is interesting that Cameron just wrote about profiling Java. What do you use?

I use OptimizeIt regularly and it's great tool. I usually like to profile every application I write to make sure there's no memory leaks, zombie threads and make sure it scales properly. Without tools like OptimizeIt and JProbe it would be much harder to deliver high quality software.

now if only I could convince those I work for to put 2 weeks on the schedule for exhaustive profiling, life would be better. I usually put in extra time to profile the apps I write, but it's always a struggle against changing requirements and shrinking deadlines.

I use OptimizeIt regularly and it's great tool.

OptimizeIt just sucks up all the memory on my system and freezes it. I found JProbe to be better.

I haven't used JProbe in a long time. The last time I used JProbe trial version back in 2001, it required more memory than OptimizeIt and was a bit slower. Glad to hear it's gotten better since then.

from my own experience, it's hard to get reliable profiling results with anything less than 512Mb of ram on a system. 1Gb is the minimum for me :)

hey, memory is cheap right.

I haven't used JProbe in a long time. The last time I used JProbe trial version back in 2001, it required more memory than OptimizeIt and was a bit slower. Glad to hear it's gotten better since then.from my own experience, it's hard to get reliable profiling results with anything less than 512Mb of ram on a system. 1Gb is the minimum for me :)hey, memory is cheap right.

i do have 1GB on my machine and i try allocating 512+ for weblogic, but still it freezes and runs out of memory...

there must be a deal between J2EE vendors and memory manufacturers. just when you think, "that's enough ram," it magically isn't enough :)

joking aside, does anyone have experience with running Sun's 64bit JVM? I've never had the need myself.

Sure, tried 64-bit JVM from Sun on Dual-Itanium HP server with 4G of memory with JBoss and 64-bit version of DB2. That whole system could not stop crashing. Eclipse wouldn't even start, JBoss was unstable, I am attributing it to JVM, basically continuous JVM dumps. Bottom line: to much of latest-n-greatest is not such a good thing after all.
Alex Z

there must be a deal between J2EE vendors and memory manufacturers. just when you think, "that's enough ram," it magically isn't enough :)

btw, i meant my weblogic-optimizeIt combo crashes with 512 MB allocated to weblogic on a machine with 1GB.

Just try YourKit to see what memory profiling should be.

Recent report from YourKit user: "As a remote application with OptimizeIt, it (the java.exe) ran 2 transactions, but used over 700 Mb (as measured by TaskManager) and took 1120 seconds of CPU time. The leak was found, but we seemed to be at OptimizeIt's limit, so a somewhat larger app seemed unprofilable. I didn't see any way with OptimizeIt to turn off the allocation info collection. Using YourKit profiler for the test, without allocation recording, it took 145 seconds of CPU time and only 204 Mb (peak memory) and I was able to locate the leak and get the GC Roots info to see how the leaked objects were held."

there must be a deal between J2EE vendors and memory manufacturers. just when you think, "that's enough ram," it magically isn't enough :)

The good news is that within a few months you'll be able to get a dual-CPU 64-bit (Intel or AMD) workstation with 8GB of RAM for less than US$4k.

joking aside, does anyone have experience with running Sun's 64bit JVM? I've never had the need myself.

On Sparc/Solaris, the 64-bit JVMs work fine. They're just a slightly slower (for most things) version of the 32-bit JVMs. Eventually, the GC algorithms will supposedly be able to handle 100GB heaps without pauses, etc., and at JavaOne they were talking about what they had running in the labs.

Regarding Itanium, the JVMs are still pretty immature, but try the BEA/jRockit one, since Intel donated a lot of IP, money and engineering effort to getting that JVM to 64 bits.

Peace,

Cameron Purdy
Tangosol, Inc.
Coherence: Shared Memories for J2EE Clusters

Anybody knows if there is a free ou open source tool for profiling an application?

Hi Joaquim,

there is a JProbe Freeware Edition that I can recommed - but it is just a Performance Profiler - you have to pay for the whle suite with Memory Debugger and Threadanalyser.

If you are working with Eclipse check out the Hyades Project which is the trace and monitoring environment of Eclipse.

You have also the NetBeans Profiler Project.

- Mirko -
codecentric
Your code is our source

last i tried Hyades, it wouldn't work with weblogic (quite a bit back). something about the thread names that weblogic uses having non-standard characters in the names. it worked nicely with jboss.

there was also another project (eclipse profiler iirc) which was able to profile weblogic applications, though i think it was a dying plugin/product.

in my limitied evaluation, optimizeit (with jbuild X professional) seemed just as challenging and confusing to setup and get up and running as the other profilers. it seemed to provide the same features as the others, in a propriatary, expensive manner.

Can someone recommand tools for Oracle App Server 10g?
We are looking for profiler, load testing, monitoring and tuning.
Thanks.

Anybody knows if there is a free ou open source tool for profiling an application?

There's profiling built into the JDK.

There are open source profilers .. one on SourceForge is called EJP.

Some of the commercial ones have free limited licenses.

However, I'd suggest looking for what you need, not what is free. If there is something good that is free, then you're lucky, but look at something like YourKit (this thread) .. they have a license that you can buy as an individual for $63 or something like that .. very inexpensive.

Peace,

Cameron Purdy
Tangosol, Inc.
Coherence: Shared Memories for J2EE Clusters

Anybody knows if there is a free ou open source tool for profiling an application?

Also see Carlos Perez's blog on the same ..

Peace,

Cameron Purdy
Tangosol, Inc.
Coherence: Shared Memories for J2EE Clusters

Sun's research group has a experimental VM called JFluid. Java5 also has a bunch of new profiling stuff.

Sun's research group has a experimental VM called JFluid

There is one major drawback of this technology: JFluid uses non standard patched JVM. This JVM is bundled into NetBeans IDE only and is not available for developers who use other IDEs or want to profile in production environment.

Kind regards,
Vladimir Kondratyev
YourKit, LLC
http://www.yourkit.com
"Don't get lost in data, get information!"