Java Platform Performance: Strategies and Tactics - Softcover

Wilson, Steve; Kesselman, Jeff

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0201709694 ISBN 13: 9780201709698

Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional, 2000

Synopsis

Drawing on the authors knowledge of the Java programming language and their extensive experience working on performance issues, the book reveals common mistakes and misconceptions concerning the performance characteristics of Java technologies. It offers overall development strategies and concrete, battle-tested techniques to dramatically improve the performance of applications constructed with the Java programming language. Java Platform Performance highlights the importance of integrating performance evaluation into the application development process and discusses measurement techniques. The book then presents practical tactics for enhancing application performance in the areas of I/O, RAM footprint, small object management, algorithms, data structures, Swing, and deployment. Specific topics covered include: *Incorporating performance evaluation into the development process *Profiling and benchmarking *Building scalable, fast Swing GUIs *Using high-speed I/O *Computing and controlling the RAM footprint *Reducing the number of classes *Eliminating temporary objects *Selecting high-performance algorithms and data structures *Using Java native code and applet packaging efficiently

About this title

Review

Now that Java is doing more and more in the field, improving its speed and efficiency is crucial for many working developers. Written by two Sun insiders, Java Platform Performance gives the experienced Java programmer plenty of useful strategies and tips for getting the most out of Java code.

This concise book offers plenty of concrete suggestions for improving real-world programs, but it also helps you think about performance as you design and test Java software. The authors first look at what "performance" really means. Beyond raw computational speed, this term can mean reducing RAM footprint, creating more responsive interfaces, and adding better scalability to programs so that they can handle more users and data.

A strength of this title is that the authors share their expertise, garnered from optimizing the Swing classes for Sun. (The tips for creating custom models and renderers in Swing will help your tables and other controls work with large datasets efficiently.) This text shows you how to benchmark and profile Java code and where to look for problem hot spots--and, once these are solved, where to go next for even better performance. You learn how to reduce object creation and class loading, which can allow your programs to load faster and consume less memory.

Also notable here is a solution for letting multiple Java programs share a single JVM for reduced memory overhead. The authors do a good job of dismantling the notion that using the Java Native Interface (JNI) is a quick fix for better performance. (The benchmarked code suggests that in almost every case native code is likely to be slower.) They also show how memory leaks still can exist in Java, and how to find them. The book closes with a guide to Java garbage collection and the latest on Sun's HotSpot Virtual Machine.

If anything, this book will convince you that good performance in Java isn't accidental; it takes planning, expertise, and plenty of testing. Also, it will get you thinking about performance in new ways with excellent strategies and tips that can help you write faster and more efficient Java code. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered:

• Measuring Java performance (computational speed, RAM footprint, startup time, scalability, perceived performance)
• Engineering performance into the software design process
• Benchmarking techniques (micro- and macro-benchmarks)
• Profiling
• Techniques to improve I/O performance
• Reducing RAM footprint (including minimizing object creation and detecting memory leaks)
• Controlling class loading (eager class loading and patterns for reducing the number of classes)
• Running multiple Java programs within the same virtual machine
• Optimizing String objects
• Object mutability and performance
• Choosing the right algorithm and data structure
• The Java Collection classes and arrays compared
• Four patterns for the Java Native Interface (JNI)
• Why native code is often slower
• Swing custom models and renderers for improved performance and scalability
• JDK 1.3 and Swing Timers for more responsive user interfaces
• Deployment and performance hints
• Tutorial on Java garbage collection
• The Java HotSpot Virtual Machine

From the Inside Flap

Author's Note In 1997, I was hired as a contractor to work on the Java(TM) Foundation Classes (JFC) Swing toolkit (Swing). This was an ambitious endeavor--Swing was slated to become the new standard for developing Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) with the Java programming language. Prior to the release of Swing, the only GUI toolkit available with the Java platform was the Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT), a fairly primitive GUI toolkit by 1990s standards. While AWT was hobbled by a "lowest common denominator" design, Swing was designed to be a state-of-the-art toolkit. Written entirely in the Java programming language, it offered a powerful Model-View architecture, an advanced widget set, and a revolutionary pluggable look-and-feel (PLAF) system. When JFC was released in mid-1998, it was quickly adopted by thousands of eager developers.

As with any successful new product, along with stories of success came some bitter complaints. Some developers complained about architectural and philosophical issues. Others complained about bugs or the lack of a particular feature. However, the complaints I personally found most troubling were that programs written with Swing were slow.

I convinced my manager to let me spend a week looking into Swing's performance issues, downloaded a trial copy of a profiling package, and started poking at different parts of the toolkit.

It turned out that there were several areas where performance improvements could be made relatively easily. At the end of the week, I wrote a report on my findings and sent it to the rest of the Swing engineering team. Other members of the team got caught up in the spirit of performance tuning and began doing their own analyses. Over the next few months, I spent more and more of my time working on analysis and tuning and the Swing team made numerous performance enhancements. Many of the techniques described in this book are based on the knowledge gained while we were tuning Swing.

In late 1998, we shipped a new version of Swing that was more than twice as fast for typical tasks than the previous release. However, while many developers were pleased with the improvements, we were troubled to see that we still received numerous complaints about performance. Clearly the problem was more complex than we first thought.

I joined the performance team in Sun's Java Software unit in late 1998 and worrying about performance issues became my full-time job. In an effort to better understand the performance issues we and our developers face, I spend a lot of time talking with developers who are working on serious, real-world Java technology-based systems. Developers sometimes point out areas where changes in the libraries or VM could improve the performance of their programs. Part of my group's charter is to help make sure those changes, when appropriate, make their way into the runtime environment.

When working with developers, we also often find areas where changes to their program code can improve performance. We've found that there are a number of common mistakes and misconceptions about the performance characteristics of Java technologies and even about performance tuning in general.

The goal of this book is to share what we've learned about performance tuning Java technology-based systems with a wide audience. We hope that it will prove to be a valuable reference for you. Steve Wilson
Sun Microsystems About This Book The information in this book will help you write high-performance software for the Java platform. It presents both high-level strategies for incorporating performance tuning into your software development process and code-level performance tuning tactics.

The two parts of the book approach performance tuning from different perspectives, providing a holistic view of the performance tuning process.
Part I: Strategies provides a high-level overview of the performance tuning process. It focuses on general strategies that you can incorporate into the development process to improve the performance of Java technology-based systems. Part II: Tactics focuses on specific techniques for improving performance once you've figured out where the hot spots and bottlenecks are.

The higher-level information in the Strategies part is intended for a broad audience, including software engineers, engineering managers, technical leads, and quality assurance specialists involved in the development of Java technology-based solutions. The information in the Tactics part is geared toward intermediate to advanced developers familiar with the Java programming language who are looking for concrete coding techniques they can use to speed up their software.

The Strategies chapters are best read as a single piece, but the Tactics part does not need to be read linearly--you can go directly to whatever topic interests you most.

The two appendices at the end of the book provide information about garbage collection and the HotSpot(TM) virtual machine (VM) and how they can impact performance. Performance Measurements Unless otherwise noted, all performance measurements described in this book were run on a pre-release build of the Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE) v. 1.3 using the HotSpot Client VM on the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Specific performance results are only representative of the configuration on which they are run. Factors such as the CPU, hard disk, operating system, and Java runtime environment (JRE) can all impact performance--keep in mind that the same benchmarks run under different configurations might yield substantially different results.We especially need to thank Larry, who provided much needed management support throughout the project. Lisa Friendly and Tim Lindholm, editors of the Java Series, patiently guided two first-time authors through the process of making this book a reality. Mike Hendrickson and Julie DiNicola from Addison-Wesley were immensely helpful throughout the entire process.

Deborah Adair of The Design Cage served as part editor, part graphic designer, and part writing coach. We couldn't have finished the project without her help.

Hans Muller, the technical lead for Project Swing and the foremost expert on Swing's threading model, provided the material for Chapter 11, Writing Responsive User Interfaces with Swing. He spent many nights and weekends working on this chapter so the rest of us could better understand how to use threads in Swing programs.

Alan Sommerer contributed to the outline and organization of early drafts, ensuring that key concepts were not missed.

David Wilson and Doris Chen began writing a two-day training course on performance tuning about the same time we started working on this book. We exchanged many ideas with them and believe both the course and the book benefited.

Over the past year, Agnes Jacob introduced us to many developers who had performance-related issues. These experiences were invaluable in deciding what information to include in this book.

Many people provided a tremendous amount of input to the book by reviewing early drafts or providing important technical tidbits: Eric Armstrong, Tom Ball, Clifford Crick, Mark Davidson, Joshua Engel, Peter Haggar, Howard Harkness, Cay Horstmann, Peter Kessler, Gary Little, Mike Martak, Mike McCloskey, Dave Mendenhall, Philip Milne, Srdjan Mitrovic, Bill Pataky, Nancy Schorr, and David Stoutamire.

0201709694P04062001

Edition details

• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0201709694
• ISBN 13: 9780201709698
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 230