IBM's Java diagnostics, part 2nd

Use extensible Verbose Toolkit for garbage collection

Improves application performance, optimizes garbage collection, and discovers application problems

Introduction: Extensible Verbose Toolkit is IBM's new tool, designed to help diagnose and analyze memory-related Java™ performance issues. This article is the second in a four-series article that describes how to get and use the suite and demonstrates how to use it to quickly diagnose some common problems.

For these reasons, you may need to look closely at the garbage collection (GC) in your application. You may be concerned about the memory usage patterns of your application: Are you using too much memory? Is there a memory leak? Can memory usage be maintained over a long period of time? You may also be interested in how you can increase application execution speed. Garbage collection has a significant impact on the performance of your application. As many people know, a poorly configured GC uses a lot of resources and slows down the application. But the reverse is also true: judicious selection of garbage collection parameters can actually make the application run faster.

GC can be appropriately ignored in a shorter cycle of Java applications or applications that are not very important in performance. In other cases, the tool makes it easier to get the information you need from a detailed GC log. The tool can show the changes that are taking place in the heap, making it easier to identify patterns that can even point you to some patterns and suggest adjustments.

EVTK belongs to IBM's new toolkit, which analyzes detailed GC logs to help provide in-depth analysis of memory management issues. In this article, you'll learn about the features of EVTK and see sample scenarios that EVTK can help you diagnose memory problems.

EVTK can process all IBM JRE logs that are version 1.4.2 or later. You can also view logs in the IBM websphere® in real time. With this tool, you can compare multiple logs at the same time, enlarge specific areas of the log, filter the data, and display it in the unit scope. The EVTK display, as shown in Figure 1:

Figure 1. EVTK Display Sample