Java Profiling

Java Application Profiling using TPTP
- By Valentina Popescu, IBM - July 2006

Profiling an Application
In the current environment of short development cycles for delivering a product, developers tend to focus more on the functional aspects of application execution, mostly via testing, debugging, and code fixing. However, many problems do not easily surface until the application is running in production mode, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and gets pushed to limits during some unexpected peak periods.

The kinds of performance problems encountered in production cannot be discovered during a debugging session. Before deployed and run in production mode, it is important to use a Profiling tool to analyze application execution and identify performance problems, such as execution bottlenecks, object leaks, and system resource limitations.
This article provides an introduction to the TPTP Profiling tool. It demonstrates how to use the TPTP Profiling tool to profile a Java application in order to identify performance hot spots, and fix and validate performance problems.

TPTP Profiling Tool
The Eclipse Test & Performance Tools Platform (TPTP) Project offers a profiling tool for identifying and isolating performance problems such as performance bottlenecks, object leaks and system resource limits. The tool targets applications of all levels of complexity, from simple standalone Java applications to Eclipse plug-ins or complex enterprise applications running on multiple machines and on different platforms.
This article was written using the TPTP 4.2.0 which require Eclipse 3.2.0.

TPTP Selected as the best free Performance tool for 2006

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TPTP API Recorder and Test Generation Tutorial

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Stand-alone Generic Log Adapter v4.3 User's Guide
Overview of the Generic Log Adapter
The Generic Log Adapter allows you to process application log files and transform their contents into the Common Base Event format. The Common Base Event specification prescribes a common format for logging, management, problem determination, and autonomic computing. It provides a consistent format that facilitates intercommunication between tools that support these goals. Common Base Event objects allow you to develop a common prescriptive event in a consistent format so that tools can be developed to support these goals.

In order to take advantage of tools such as the Log and Trace Analyzer that support Common Base Event objects, your application log files need to conform to the Common Base Event format. To produce application log records that conform, you can do one of the following:

- Change the application that generates the log file to create Common Base Event records directly.
- Write a transform that converts application log files to Common Base Event records.
The first approach is impractical unless the application is currently being developed. This approach does not solve the problem of integrating existing application logs with the Common Base Event format.

The second approach is more practical. However, it leaves you with the tedious task of writing the transform. Typically, this is accomplished by either writing some custom code in either a third-generation programming language or a script that can be used by established scripting tools such as Perl. Once the transform is created, you must test the transform and integrate the transform solution into the tools that use Common Base Event objects.