Java Performance Tuning [Paperback]

Jack Shirazi (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

No matter what language they're programming in, developers always wish things would run faster! Especially when writing mission-critical applications, no one wants to be limited by the programming environment. Java Performance Tuning provides all the details you need to know to "performance tune" any type of Java program and make Java code run significantly faster. Java Performance Tuning contains step-by-step instructions on all aspects of the performance tuning process, right from such early considerations as setting goals, measuring performance, and choosing a compiler. There are extensive, detailed examples for tuning many parts of an application, and likely pitfalls are identified. The book also provides performance tuning checklists that enable developers to make their tuning as comprehensive as possible.

About the Author

Jack Shirazi is an independent consultant. He was an early adopter of Java, and for the last few years has consulted mainly for the financial sector, focusing on Java performance. Before using Java, Jack spent many years tuning Smalltalk applications. Jack's early career involved research in theoretical physics and bioinformatics. Jack has publications in the field of protein structure and is proud to have contributed to some of the core Perl5 modules.

Product Details

• Paperback: 442 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (January 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596000154
• ISBN-13: 978-0596000158
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,635,495 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Recommended, December 6, 2000

By	Jason Conner (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Java Performance Tuning (Paperback)

The book ranges rather widely, covering a huge number of tuning details. The author seems to know hands-on performance tuning very well, and many of the examples were directly applicable to our own development. There is only one chapter on designing for performance (I would have liked more), but in that chapter he did identify precisely the issues that we encountered in our project. The example of double sorting internationalized text transferred directly to our project and speeded up a crucial area of our presentation. I do recommend this book, but do not expect a design book. This is strongly hands-on performance tuning.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Provides ideas on tactical optimization for performance gain, November 2, 2005

By	Manish Singla (Denver, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Java Performance Tuning (2nd Edition) (Paperback)

This book provides good ideas on tactical optimization for performance gain but could have also covered architectural patterns and process for performance optimization.
This book covers the areas of optimizing compilers, I/O, RAM footprint, small object management and deployment etc.

Next edition may also cover architectural decisions (or patterns) which are costly to reverse later. Also, coverage on processes for performance optimization will be great in next edition. Getting a program to run faster costs money, and thus this business decision should have process ( or guidelines for series of high level actions ) to facilitate the optimization.

Other things, I would like to cover in next edition are
1) How to choose between "speed up the slow things" or "do the slow things less often".
2) How to identify ACTUAL areas of improvement. i.e. Importance of automated run that reasonably simulates the program under its usual conditions. (Example, our test on performance gave excellent results. But European customers rejected the product because we had not simulated ocean hop of packets as 2 databases were in America. Or importance of using a multi-user simulation system to identify real problems i.e. transaction interactions etc).
3) Importance of cohesive, loosely coupled and well factored modules for behaviour-preserving transformations of performance.
4) Importance of measurement before starting optimization.

Anyway, great book.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Criticisms invalid, January 16, 2001

By	John M. Harby "John" (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Java Performance Tuning (Paperback)

I fail to understand the prior critical messages. One said that the author didn't present an accurate description of Reference objects. Well, the description starting on page 108 matches the one I was given by Sun in their performance workshop I attended in Mountain View. So I guess Sun does not know what they are doing in terms of Reference objects :).

Another message claimed that this book was not useful for enterprise applications. To the contrary, I was very impressed with the way he covered the actual process of doing performance analysis, he didn't just present a bunch of individual tips. Many people neglect this in enterprise development - they spend a bunch of time eyeballing the code and trying to do some quick fixes when they really need to set up a harness and do some serious testing.