Tracing/Profiling in Java?

[brikis98]

At work, we are working with a huge Java (1.5) codebase that needs to perform very quickly. We need to find some kind of tools to help us analyze the execution of our code. For example, how many times a certain method was called, how long it took to execute, memory usage, etc.

I've found tons of profiling/performance tools online, such as PerfAnal, J-Sprint, HProf, JRAT, and more. Has anyone actually used them? Any recommendations?

 

[AmigaMan]

We've used JProfiler in our deployed/production system before to track down problems. Also use it occasionally in our test environments to do scalability testing.

 

[kamper]

Well, java.lang.System.currentTimeMillis() is the cheapest profiler and can provide some very useful timing information at certain levels

I haven't specifically used anything else for java, but I hear that netbeans has a decent profiler built in. Don't know how good it is or how hard it would be to get netbeans to play nicely with your code though.

 

[meksta]

JProbe or OptimizeIt is what you can use...

Or modify your code to use something like Spring AOP's methodinterceptor.

 

[itachi]

there's also eclipse tptp, netbeans, quantify, devpartner, and yourkit.

tptp and netbeans are both open source.. netbeans has a much more user-friendly profiler.
quantify and devpartner are expensive.
yourkit and jprofiler target the same marktet and, for the most part, have the same feature set.