Detecting out of memory errors

Question

I would like to provide my system with a way of detecting whether out of memory exception has occurred or not. The aim for this exercise is to expose this flag through JMX a

Answer 1

You could use an out of memory warning system; this http://www.javaspecialists.eu/archive/Issue092.html can be an inspiration. You could configure a listener which is invoked after a certain memory threshold ( say 80%) is breached - you can use this invocation to start taking corrective measures.

We use something similar, where we suspend the component's service when the memory threshold of the component reaches 80% and start the clean up action; the component comes back only when the used memory comes below a another configurable value threshold.