Burst memory usage in Java

Question

I am trying to get a handle on proper memory usage and garbage collection in Java. I\'m not a novice programmer by any means, but it always seems to me that once Java touches so

Answer 1

There are some great documents produced by Sun/Oracle describing Java's Garbage Collection. A quick search on "Java Garbage Collection Tuning" yeilds results such as; http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/gc-tuning-5-138395.html and http://java.sun.com/docs/hotspot/gc1.4.2/

The introduction of the Oracle doc states;

The Java TM 2 Platform Standard Edition (J2SE TM platform) is used for a wide variety of applications from small applets on desktops to web services on large servers. In the J2SE platform version 1.4.2 there were four garbage collectors from which to choose but without an explicit choice by the user the serial garbage collector was always chosen. In version 5.0 the choice of the collector is based on the class of the machine on which the application is started.

This “smarter choice” of the garbage collector is generally better but is not always the best. For the user who wants to make their own choice of garbage collectors, this document will provide information on which to base that choice. This will first include the general features of the garbage collections and tuning options to take the best advantage of those features. The examples are given in the context of the serial, stop-the-world collector. Then specific features of the other collectors will be discussed along with factors that should considered when choosing one of the other collectors.

They describe the various types of collectors available and the situations in which they should be used. I remember using this alongside JConsole to montior how the application performed when started with various different options.

These docs will give you a bit more insight into how collection occurs depending on the parameters you are using.