Java Performance [Paperback]

Charlie Hunt (Author), Binu John (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 14, 2011 | ISBN-10: 0137142528 | ISBN-13: 978-0137142521 | Edition: 1

“The definitive master class in performance tuning Java applications…if you love all the gory details, this is the book for you.”

–James Gosling, creator of the Java Programming Language

 

Improvements in the Java platform and new multicore/multiprocessor hardware have made it possible to dramatically improve the performance and scalability of Java software.

Java^™ Performance covers the latest Oracle and third-party tools for monitoring and measuring performance on a wide variety of hardware architectures and operating systems. The authors present dozens of tips and tricks you’ll find nowhere else.

You’ll learn how to construct experiments that identify opportunities for optimization, interpret the results, and take effective action. You’ll also find powerful insights into microbenchmarking–including how to avoid common mistakes that can mislead you into writing poorly performing software. Then, building on this foundation, you’ll walk through optimizing the Java HotSpot VM, standard and multitiered applications; Web applications, and more. Coverage includes

• Taking a proactive approach to meeting application performance and scalability goals
• Monitoring Java performance at the OS level in Windows, Linux, and Oracle Solaris environments
• Using modern Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and OS observability tools to profile running systems, with almost no performance penalty
• Gaining “under the hood” knowledge of the Java HotSpot VM that can help you address most Java performance issues
• Integrating JVM-level and application monitoring
• Mastering Java method and heap (memory) profiling
• Tuning the Java HotSpot VM for startup, memory footprint, response time, and latency
• Determining when Java applications require rework to meet performance goals
• Systematically profiling and tuning performance in both Java SE and Java EE applications
• Optimizing the performance of the Java HotSpot VM

Using this book, you can squeeze maximum performance and value from all your Java applications–no matter how complex they are, what platforms they’re running on, or how long you’ve been running them.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

More to Explore: See More Java Guides

Title Sams Teach Yourself Java in 24 Hours Sams Teach Yourself Java in 21 Days Java™ for Programmers Java Performance Covering Java 7 and Android Covering Java 7 and Android Deitel Developer Series Covering Latest Oracle and Third-Party Tools   Guide Type Tutorial Tutorial Tutorial Special Topic   Audience Level Beginner Beginner to Intermediate Beginner to Intermediate Intermediate to Advanced   Pages 432 720 1168 720   List Price $34.99 $44.99 $59.99 $59.99   Publication Date October, 2011 July, 2012 April, 2011 September, 2011   Author(s) Cadenhead Cadenhead Deitel / Deitel Hunt / John   Imprint Sams Sams Prentice Hall Addison-Wesley   Print Book 0672335751 0672335743 0132821540 0137142528   Kindle Book B005OR9MBW Not Available - Request Kindle Version B004YWAZUU B005R4NELQ   Edition 6 6 2 1   Brief Description An introduction to programming and Java; no previous programming experience required. An introduction to Java, for readers with some previous programming experience. A comprehensive guide to Java, for professional programmers new to Java, but experienced with other programming languages. An authoritative guide to creating faster, more reliable applications, for intermediate to advanced programmers.

About the Author

Charlie Hunt is the JVM performance lead engineer at Oracle. He is responsible for improving the performance of the HotSpot JVM and Java SE class libraries. He has also been involved in improving the performance of the Oracle GlassFish and Oracle WebLogic Server. A regular JavaOne speaker on Java performance, he also coauthored NetBeans™ IDE Field Guide (Prentice Hall, 2005).

Binu John is a senior performance engineer at Ning, Inc., where he focuses on improving the performance and scalability of the Ning platform to support millions of page views per month. Before that, he spent more than a decade working on Java-related performance issues at Sun Microsystems, where he served on Sun’s Enterprise Java Performance team. John has contributed to developing industry standard benchmarks such as SPECjms2007 and SPECJAppServer2010; published several performance whitepapers; and contributed to java.net’s XMLTest and WSTest benchmark projects.

Product Details

• Paperback: 720 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (October 14, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0137142528
• ISBN-13: 978-0137142521
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 0.9 x 8.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #81,832 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential information hard-to-find anywhere else January 11, 2012

By The Last Person You'd Expect VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

This is an outstanding book and one of the few that, even after working through, I'll be keeping within reach at my desk. After almost a decade working on the JVM, I've only recently begun work on some software that really strains our systems, processing a million and some records a day with several instances each on multiple threads, and so until recently, performance has always been a secondary concern. While the app's code is certainly not perfect, I started wondering whether any of the mysterious extended options available to the JVM might take some of the weight off the system without having to wait until the next formal development/release cycle. This is what prompted me to look at this book, but as I'll describe, I found much more.

I was very impressed with the amount of information provided: unlike most computer-related books, this is dense with text, rather than long code samples, screenshots and diagrams. Why is this a good thing? This is not just a book on how to use the JVM and its related performance tools, but also a book on the JVM's internal architecture (including its memory model and garbage collectors) and on the art of benchmarking and performance testing. Though the prose can be dry, the authors are very patient about describing these topics to readers in a clear way, and sometimes with great detail. OTOH, as this is written with experienced developers in mind, beware that it can at times be challenging (even for someone who's done their fair share of coding!).

There are a few major areas covered:

1) Tuning the JVM. This usually involves applying command-line options to the JVM executable (I can almost guarantee you'll discover you have more control over the JVM than you thought you did!) The authors cover the JVM internal architecture, garbage collection and memory model to provide context on what these options actually do, as well as extensive descriptions of how and when to use the options.

2) Performance monitoring tools, profiling, heap-dump analysis. Much of the book is devoted to describing not only the tools available in the JDK, but those provided by popular OSes and 3rd parties.

3) Writing benchmarks. There is more an art to this than you might expect, especially when writing benchmarks for the JVM. Tips on benchmarking different types of applications (i.e. webapps, web services) are separated into different chapters.

The biggest downside, as another reviewer pointed out, is it's 'oracle-centricity'. For example, you'll find much said on Netbeans and Glassfish, while Eclipse and Tomcat don't get a single mention. These are tools that we all know about, but what great, more obscure, tools am I missing out on due to this obvious bias? This seriously damages the credibility of the authors as far as tool-selection is concerned, but in the end, it's the JVM and the performance testing concepts that are most important. Once I learn the vocabulary, I'll be able to figure out through Google which tools are best.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars lacks supportive data to corroborate the theories January 19, 2013

By j.p.s.

Format:Paperback

This book is essentially a compilation of all internal product documentations and freely available online tutorials without good examples to corroborate the theories presented throughout the book. It discusses JVM tuning as an infinite set of variables, which look more like infinite variety and challenges to the reader than anything concrete and useful. It is an "okay" book if you just want to "read" about Java performance, but if you have a real project and a real Java performance issue to deal with, you'll have to try out all the permutations and find out yourself which ones are helpful and which ones are not - only if you have infinite amount of time to do so. In reality, sometimes we just want to get a Java performance issue resolved as quickly as possible so that we can move on to the next task on our busy agenda. This book has clearly failed to meet the basic criterion of being data-driven to be a practical, useful guide to helping readers resolve their Java performance issues they encounter with their projects. I hope the lead author can help improve it if he gets a chance to update this book in future.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but rather Oracle Centric November 23, 2011

By Shakespeare

Format:Paperback

The last book to cover this topic n any detail was Steve Wilson et al's "Java Platform Performance", which was published in 2000. HotSpot has moved on a fair bit since then, so its good to see a new book covering the subject.

The sections on JVM tuning and profiling are particularly strong. There's also a decent section on HotSpot Garbage Collectors, though I would have liked to see some more discussion on alternative GC algorithms such as IBM's Balanced Garbage Collector and Azul's C4.

It should be noted that there is a definite bias towards Oracle's tools and hardware. For example the section on "Choosing the Right CPU architecture" concentrated mainly on Oracle's SPARC chips. Also the two profilers featured are the Oracle Solaris Studio Performance Analysiser Tool, and the NetBeans profiler. Likewise in the Java EE Section all the examples are based on Glassfish.

The book doesn't provide a recipe for solving every problem, but does provide enough information for non-performance specialist developers and others involved in application performance tuning work, to solve the majority of commonly encountered performance problems.