Java News from Monday, June 13, 2005

ej-technologies GmbH has released version 4.0 of JProfiler, a $698 payware profiler based on the Java virtual machine profiling interface (JVMPI that can report on CPU usage, memory size, threads, and "VM telemetry" (whatever that is). New features in 4.0 include:

• "Exclusive deep size" calculation in the heap walker
• Measurement of JDBC, JMS and JNDI calls as annotations in the call tree
• J2EE component detection for servlets, JSPs and EJBs
• For servlets and JSPs, the call tree can be split for different request URLs
• Separate hot spot calculation for JDBC, JMS and JNDI calls as well as URL invocations
• Selectable aggregation level for most views: methods, classes, packages and J2EE components
• Improved call tree views with enhanced visual feedback
• Recording and display of object allocation times in the heap walker
• New "Time" view in the heap walker that shows a time-resolved histogram of allocations
• Global bookmarks for all time-resolved graph views
• On-demand profiling
• New non-blocking startup mode of the profiled JVM for in-production profiling
• Support for new profiling interface Java Virtual Machine Tool Interface (JVMTI) in Java 1.5 and 1.6

JProfiler is a useful tool, but mostly I'm pretty happy with my old 2.x version. The "exclusive deep size feature" sounds interesting. If it's what I think it is (details were lacking) just maybe it will convince me to pay the $179 to upgrade; but first I'll probably try some of the open source profilers that have been released in the last couple of years before deciding.

Matthias Kempka has released Coverlipse 0.9.0, an open source (Common Public License) Eclipse 3.0.x plugin for code coverage visualization of JUnit tests. Interestingly, the code coverage can be shown right in the Java editor in Eclipse. If this tool works (I haven't tried it yet, but I plan to) this would make it quite a bit easier to fill in holes in test coverage.

Svetozar Misljencevic and Dusty Lefèvre have released Yet Another Java Profiler 1.0, a free-as-in-speech (GPL) profiler based on the JVMTI.

Vlad Roubtsov has released EMMA 2.0.5312, an open source code coverage tool for Java. One interesting feature I haven't seen in other tools of this type: Emma can measure code coverage even when you don't have the source code for a package.

The Big Faceless Organization has released the Big Faceless PDF Library 2.4.2, a $700 payware (more if you want support) Java class library for creating PDF documents. The $1300 Extended Edition adds the AcroForms support, digital signatures, and the ability to import and edit and existing PDF documents. Version 2.4.2 improves supoprt for TIFF and JPEG and fixes bugs. Java 1.2 or later is required.