TDA - Thread Dump Analyzer

Version 2.0 of TDA is released. This release includes: Tool now is available as VisualVM plugin. Skip broken thread dumps. Custom Thread Categories. New Welcome Screen. Small Adjustments to support SAP JVM ... [More] Dumps (slightly modified from SUN Dumps). Small Adjustments to support HP JVM DUmps (slightly modified from SUN Dumps). Icons of monitors with high contention now have a red background (issue 13). Multiple Selection of Threads (issue 11). Stack line count is now also set in long running thread result (issue 19). Read heap information from Sun JDK 1.6 Dumps and display them. Thread Dumps or logfiles can be pasted from clipboard (issue 20). Internationalisation (only english available so far, not finished yet). Extended Help, now uses javahelp. General Bugfixing. Biggest new features included with this release are the VisualVM plugin, which offers an integration of TDA into Fig 1. Welcome Screen TDA also includes a reworked welcome screen with shortcuts to common operations and it has a reworked help based on javahelp. Fig 2. VisualVM 1.0.1 running with TDA Plugin TDA can be downloaded at the TDA Website, where also a Webstart link is available. The VisualVM plugin currently isn't available from the VisualVM plugin center (it still offers the beta at the moment), you need to download it manually from the TDA Website, in the Document & Files section. All three plugin files available there need to be installed. [Less]

Version 2.0 of TDA is released. This release includes: Tool now is available as VisualVM plugin. Skip broken thread dumps. Custom Thread Categories. New Welcome Screen. Small Adjustments to support ... [More] SAP JVM Dumps (slightly modified from SUN Dumps). Small Adjustments to support HP JVM DUmps (slightly modified from SUN Dumps). Icons of monitors with high contention now have a red background (issue 13). Multiple Selection of Threads (issue 11). Stack line count is now also set in long running thread result (issue 19). Read heap information from Sun JDK 1.6 Dumps and display them. Thread Dumps or logfiles can be pasted from clipboard (issue 20). Internationalisation (only english available so far, not finished yet). Extended Help, now uses javahelp. General Bugfixing. Biggest new features included with this release are the VisualVM plugin, which offers an integration of TDA into VisualVM and the custom categories feature. Custom Categories offer the possibility to create own categories, e.g request pool threads for easier access to the filtered threads. Fig 1. Welcome Screen TDA also includes a reworked welcome screen with shortcuts to common operations and it has a reworked help based on javahelp. Fig 2. VisualVM 1.0.1 running with TDA Plugin TDA can be downloaded at the TDA Website, where also a Webstart link is available. The VisualVM plugin currently isn't available from the VisualVM plugin center (it still offers the beta at the moment), you need to download it manually from the TDA Website, in the Document & Files section. All three plugin files available there need to be installed. [Less]

Development of TDA has been stalled for some months now just because lack of time although I already started working on some new features for an upcoming release including a VisualVM integration. But I started working on the tool again hoping to have ... [More] a release ready at the end of next month. But now it's your turn. I'm asking if there are any cool features you are missing in TDA and want them to be included in the next release. Request a feature in the TDA Issue Tracker for it or if you don't have a java.net account drop me a line below this blog post. [Less]

Development of TDA has been stalled for some months now just because lack of time although I already started working on some new features for an upcoming release including a VisualVM integration. But I started working on the tool again hoping to have ... [More] a release ready at the end of next month. But now it's your turn. I'm asking if there are any cool features you are missing in TDA and want them to be included in the next release. Request a feature in the TDA Issue Tracker for it or if you don't have a java.net account drop me a line below this blog post. [Less]

I just stumbled across some JavaOne sessions available online and blog entries concerning application analysis and garbage collections: VisualVM, BTrace, and GlassFish, Blog entry about btrace integration in VisualVM. A sample session examing a ... [More] Glassfish instance demonstrates btrace in VisualVM. Automated Heap Dump Analysis for Developers, Testers (JavaOne 2008 Session TS-5729), a JavaOne 2008 session about the Eclipse/SAP Memory Analyzer, presented by one of its core developers. The Garbage-First Garbage Collector (JavaOne 2008 Session TS-5419), a session about the upcoming Garbage First Collector, which will eventually replace the Concurrent Mark Sweep Collector (in an upcoming patch release for JDK 6). Performance Considerations in Concurrent Garbage-Collected Systems Interview with Tony Printezis, interview with one of the architects at sun responsible for the garbage collection. [Less]

I just stumbled across some JavaOne sessions available online and blog entries concerning application analysis and garbage collections: VisualVM, BTrace, and GlassFish, Blog entry about btrace integration in VisualVM. A sample session examing a ... [More] Glassfish instance demonstrates btrace in VisualVM. Automated Heap Dump Analysis for Developers, Testers (JavaOne 2008 Session TS-5729), a JavaOne 2008 session about the Eclipse/SAP Memory Analyzer, presented by one of its core developers. The Garbage-First Garbage Collector (JavaOne 2008 Session TS-5419), a session about the upcoming Garbage First Collector, which will eventually replace the Concurrent Mark Sweep Collector (in an upcoming patch release for JDK 6). Performance Considerations in Concurrent Garbage-Collected Systems Interview with Tony Printezis, interview with one of the architects at sun responsible for the garbage collection. [Less]

I just read an email on the VisualVM mailing list announcing the availability of VisualVM 1.0. No changelog was provided with the announcement. But as far as I can see only bugs were fixed since the release of the RC. Additionally JDK 1.6u7 has be ... [More] released, which contains VisualVM with the slightly different name "Java VisualVM". They also redesigned their homepage, it is really nice looking now. I just did a short test with the tool and checked if my TDA plugin still works. Not much changed from the release candidate and the plugin still is fine. The VisualVM documentation has been greatly improved though, there are now different troubleshooting guides and an extensive documentation on how to extend visualvm. Fig 2. VisualVM 1.0 The keynote presentation from JavaOne 2008 of VisualVM is also available online now and can be watched on the JavaOne Website. The keynote presents different topics, the VisualVM is the first of them and lasts eight minutes. My TDA plugin still is in beta, I haven't managed so far to do a 1.0 version of the plugin to have it available in time of the VisualVM 1.0 release. But the beta is still available through the VisualVM Update Center. Note though, it isn't available for the bundle VisualVM in the JDK 1.6u7, it has to be downloaded manually from the TDA website to use it with this version. [Less]

I just read an email on the VisualVM mailing list announcing the availability of VisualVM 1.0. No changelog was provided with the announcement. But as far as I can see only bugs were fixed since the release of the RC. Additionally JDK 1.6u7 has be ... [More] released, which contains VisualVM with the slightly different name "Java VisualVM". They also redesigned their homepage, it is really nice looking now. I just did a short test with the tool and checked if my TDA plugin still works. Not much changed from the release candidate and the plugin still is fine. The VisualVM documentation has been greatly improved though, there are now different troubleshooting guides and an extensive documentation on how to extend visualvm. Fig 2. VisualVM 1.0 The keynote presentation from JavaOne 2008 of VisualVM is also available online now and can be watched on the JavaOne Website. The keynote presents different topics, the VisualVM is the first of them and lasts eight minutes. My TDA plugin still is in beta, I haven't managed so far to do a 1.0 version of the plugin to have it available in time of the VisualVM 1.0 release. But the beta is still available through the VisualVM Update Center. Note though, it isn't available for the bundle VisualVM in the JDK 1.6u7, it has to be downloaded manually from the TDA website to use it with this version. [Less]

I just observed if I send a kill -3 to a VM to request a thread dump and the VM Option -XX: PrintClassHistogram is set to also dump the class histogram of the objects currently in memory this leads to a Full GC. It looks like this is to clean up ... [More] memory before dumping the class histogram. I tested it with JDK 5 and 6, both show the same behaviour. So it is better to be careful with setting this option on production environments otherwise this would lead to unwanted cleanups of the memory (think of soft-references in a cache) when just a thread dump is requested. [Less]

I just observed if I send a kill -3 to a VM to request a thread dump and the VM Option -XX:+PrintClassHistogram is set to also dump the class histogram of the objects currently in memory this leads to a Full GC. It looks like this is to clean up ... [More] memory before dumping the class histogram. I tested it with JDK 5 and 6, both show the same behaviour. So it is better to be careful with setting this option on production environments otherwise this would lead to unwanted cleanups of the memory (think of soft-references in a cache) when just a thread dump is requested. [Less]