JDK 6 Update 11 Comes With Updated Java VisualVM
The JDK 6 Update 11 has been released today, it contains an updated version of the Java VisualVM tool based on the most recent VisualVM 1.0.1. If you are using the Java VisualVM tool we suggest you to get the latest JDK bits at http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp and update your installations. This way you will get the latest VisualVM bugfixes and improvements.
Developer.com Product of the Year 2009: Give Us Your Vote!
The Product of the Year 2009 awards are in progress at Developer.com, you can vote till Monday, December 15, 2008. If you like the NetBeans profiler or VisualVM tool, please give us your vote in the Development Utility of the Year category!
NetBeans IDE 6.5 Released
Today the NetBeans IDE 6.5 has been released at http://www.netbeans.org. In this version the profiler introduces some new features, the most significant are:
- Profiler remote packs are generated by the Attach Wizard, no additional downloads are needed for remote profiling
- HeapWalker tool got significant performance improvements and some usability tweaks
- Table view has been added to the threads monitor
In the 6.5 release the profiler also adds an experimental support for HP-UX (PA-RISC 32bit, 64bit) and Phone ME Advanced (Windows x86, Linux x86) platforms. Also, almost 100 bugs have been fixed to deliver the best quality product.
A good starting point for new profiler users is the Introduction to Profiling Java Applications in NetBeans IDE document. Experienced profiler users will appreciate the new document describing Profiling Points feature: Using Profiling Points in NetBeans IDE.
To get a general information about the new NetBeans IDE release see the NetBeans IDE 6.5 Release Notes. To get detailed information about new profiler features and bugfixes see the NetBeans profiler 6.5 Release Notes.
VisualVM in Ubuntu 8.10
The new version of Ubuntu (8.10 aka Intrepid Ibex) was released yesterday. Because I heard of many improvements in this version I immediately got a copy and installed it. The overall impression is awesome! And the best of all - VisualVM is available as an Ubuntu package right from the Canonical repositories.
Just open the Synaptic Manager, type "visualvm" in the quick-search box (btw, this is the best thing since sliced bread ;) and you can install VisualVM with all the dependencies. The download size is quite hefty (cca. 300MB) since it downloads the whole open-jdk, mysql and i-dont-know-what-else but in the end you have full-blown java development environment with the bonus of VisualVM nicely registered under "Applications/Programming/VisualVM" menu shortcut.
What is left now is to port some Ubuntu specific monitoring stuff to VisualVM plugins. Any volunteers? :)
VisualVM 1.0.1 Released
VisualVM 1.0.1 tool has been released at https://visualvm.dev.java.net. This is mostly a bugfix release based on the VisualVM 1.0.
According to the Release Notes document these changes have been made:
- Profiler supports OpenJDK
- Profiler is silently disabled on unsupported platforms, the rest of the tool can run unaffected
- Minor improvements of warning messages in the tool and plugins to better describe reported problems
- New plugins available on the Plugin center: JvmCapabilities, KillApplication, SysTray
To get more information about the tool, download it and start using it, visit the project pages at https://visualvm.dev.java.net. Information about the new plugins can be found on the Plugins page. If you want to provide some feedback to VisualVM developers, let them know on a mailing list.
NetBeans IDE 6.5 Beta Released
The NetBeans IDE 6.5 Beta has been released, read the release information or see the list of all new features. The bits can be downloaded from this link.
The profiler introduces three new features since 6.5 Milestone 1:
- Table view for threads: new tab in threads monitor displaying all threads of profiled application in a table
- HeapWalker improvements: significantly improved performance of resolving references to an instance, improved readability of path to GC root
- Experimental support for HP-UX: profiling should work on HP-UX PA-RISC 32bit and 64bit systems
Also, many bugs have been fixed, you can display the list of issues by clicking this Issue Tracker query.
VisualVM 1.0 Released
VisualVM 1.0 tool has been released at https://visualvm.dev.java.net. VisualVM is a free opensource visual tool integrating several commandline JDK tools and lightweight performance and memory profiling capabilities. Designed for both production and development time use, it further enhances the capability of monitoring and performance analysis for the Java SE platform.
The main features as listed on the Features page are:
- Displaying local and remote Java applications
- Displaying application configuration and runtime environment
- Monitoring application memory consumption and runtime behavior
- Monitoring application threads
- Profiling application performance and analyzing memory allocation
- Taking and displaying thread dumps
- Taking and browsing heap dumps
- Analyzing core dumps
- Analyzing applications offline
VisualVM is designed as an extensible tool, new features can be easily added using a built-in Plugin Center. There are some useful plugins already available, for example the MBeans browser. All available plugins are listed on Plugins page. The tool is built on NetBeans Platform which together with VisualVM APIs makes it very easy for the developers to create new plugins.
There are three main typical users of VisualVM:
- Application developers who can use VisualVM for profiling the applications, taking and browsing thread and heap dumps or just monitoring application runtime environment and behavior,
- System administrators who can use VisualVM for monitoring and controlling local and remote applications across the entire network using jvmstat or JMX technologies,
- Java application users who can use VisualVM to generate application snapshots containing all the data necessary to diagnose and fix bugs
Together with VisualVM 1.0 release the tool has also been released as Java VisualVM, a new JDK tool first available in Sun JDK 6 Update 7 which can be downloaded from this link. In initial releases these tools are identical, but in the future Java VisualVM will be a stable tool tested with each JDK distribution, whereas VisualVM will be a bleeding-edge distribution with the latest features and bug fixes.
To get more information about the tool, download it and start using it, visit the project pages at https://visualvm.dev.java.net. If you want to provide some feedback to VisualVM developers, let them know on a mailing list.
NetBeans IDE 6.5 Milestone 1 Released
The NetBeans IDE 6.5 Milestone 1 has been released, list of new features is available on New and Noteworthy in Milestone1 page. The bits can be downloaded from this link.
The profiler introduces one significant new feature - generating remote profiling packs from the Attach Wizard. You don't have to download a separate file for remote profiling, correct bits for target OS are generated by the Wizard based on the provided settings. There are also some important bugfixes in the profiler in this release, the list of issues is generated by this Issue Tracker query.
VisualVM and NetBeans Profiler at JavaOne 2008
JavaOne 2008 is held in Moscone center in San Francisco next week. For those who are interested in VisualVM and NetBeans Profiler here is the list of sessions, BOFs, where VisualVM and NetBeans Profiler will be mentioned.
VisualVM
- BOF-5223 VisualVM: Integrated and Extensible Troubleshooting Tool for the Java™ Platform
- TS-6000 Improving Application Performance with Monitoring and Profiling Tools
- TS-7735 New Approaches to Visualization and Management of Application Server Clusters
- BOF-5091 Toward a Consumer IDE: Get What You Want When You Want It
- POD-136 Java SE: Monitoring, Management and Troubleshooting
NetBeans Profiler
- TS-6000 Improving Application Performance with Monitoring and Profiling Tools
- TS-5251 Pushing Java™ Technology to the Limits: Turning a General-Purpose PC into an HDTV
- LAB-8430 Isolating Performance Bottlenecks and Memory Leaks With the NetBeans™ Profiler
- LAB-1440 Performance Troubleshooting
You can use this opportunity to get more information about these two products and/or talk to us VisualVM and NetBeans Profiler developers. I hope you can easily recognize us. See you next week.
NetBeans IDE 6.1 Released
The NetBeans IDE 6.1 has been released. For the profiler this is a stabilization release, several serious bugs have been fixed. You can find list of fixes here. To get the profiler, just download the IDE. Additional binaries for remote profiling can be downloaded from profiler homepage.
VisualVM Beta 2 Released
VisualVM Beta 2 version been released, you can download it from https://visualvm.dev.java.net/. The most significant news are:
- VisualVM graphics - VisualVM has new splashscreen, logo and application icon.
- Improved Application Snapshots - application overview is saved into the snapshot.
- Improved defining JMX connection - added possibility to provide persistent username & password for the connection.
- API & code cleanup - extending VisualVM is now even easier!
- Many other improvements and bugfixes.
VisualVM Beta Released
Beta version of VisualVM tool has been released, both binary and sources are available at https://visualvm.dev.java.net. It introduces many new features and improvements:
- Applications defined by JMX connection can now be handled by VisualVM the same way as other applications, Overview, Monitor and Threads views are available.
- Application snapshots allow to save all thread dumps and heap dumps of an application in a single file.
- Defined hosts and VM coredumps are now persistent and available on subsequent VisualVM sessions.
- Load & Save As actions are available for thread dumps and heap dumps.
- Running applications automatically detected on remote hosts even if jstatd was started after the host has been added to VisualVM.
- Many UI improvements like new icons, main menu & toolbar cleanup etc.
- Customizable Options for core tool and plugins (Tools | Options).
- GlassFish plugin available on Plugin Center.
For plugin developers there's a basic docs bundle available as well as online Getting Started Extending VisualVM guide. Just keep in mind that the API will be further improved and the changes may be incompatible.
NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta incl. profiler released
The NetBeans 6.1 Beta including the profiler has been released. For the profiler this is a stabilization release, several serious bugs have been fixed. For more information and downloads visit NetBeans profiler 6.1 Beta page.
VisualVM Milestone 3 Released
Today the Milestone 3 of the VisualVM tool has been released. It contains several UI and features improvements, also performance and memory management have been improved. The build can be downloaded from https://visualvm.dev.java.net.
Sources of the tool are available from a CVS server, Milestone 3 sources are on visualvm_m3 branch. There is a Build Guide available to provide basic information on how to build the tool from sources. A zipped JavaDoc snapshot for Milestone 3 and API Entrypoints document are available for plugin developers - just keep in mind that the API is experimental and thus subject to change for upcoming milestones.
VisualVM Milestone 2 Released
Today the Milestone 2 of the VisualVM tool has been released. The most important thing about this release is that an experimental API has been defined for the third-party plugins to smoothly integrate into the UI and workflow. Currently only the Milestone 2 binary is available, the sources and API documentation will be available soon.
The other improvements in this release are separate threads view which is now available for each monitored application and basic support for VM coredumps on Solaris and Linux - displaying basic information and taking thread dump and heap dump from the coredump. Also some recent bugfixes of the NetBeans profiler have been merged into VisualVM.
