Java News from Saturday, April 8, 2006

IBM's alphaWorks has released the IBM Thread and Monitor Dump Analyzer for Java:

During the run time of a Java process, some Java Virtual Machiness (JVMs) may not respond predictably and oftentimes seem to hang up for a long time or until JVM shutdown occurs. It is not easy to determine the root cause of these sorts of problems.

By triggering a javacore when a Java process does not respond, it is possible to collect diagnostic information related to the JVM and a Java application captured at a particular point during execution. For example, the information can be about the operating system, the application environment, threads, native stack, locks, and memory. The exact contents are dependent on the platform on which the application is running.

On some platforms, and in some cases, javacore is known as "javadump." The code that creates javacore is part of the JVM. One can control it by using environment variables and run-time switches. By default, a javacore occurs when the JVM terminates unexpectedly. A javacore can also be triggered by sending specific signals to the JVM. Although javacore or javadump is present in Sun Solaris JVMs, much of the content of the javacore is added by IBM and, therefore, is present only in IBM JVMs.

IBM Thread and Monitor Dump Analyzer for Java Technology analyzes javacore and diagnoses monitor locks and thread activities in order to identify the root cause of hangs, deadlocks, and resource contention or monitor bottlenecks.


Teodor Danciu has released JasperReports 1.2.1, an open source (LGPL) Java library for generating reports from XML templates and customizable data sources (including JDBC). The output can be displayed on the screen, printed, or written to XML or PDF files. Version 1.2.1 adds custom URL stream handlers.