Method for finding memory leak in large Java heap dumps

Question

I have to find a memory leak in a Java application. I have some experience with this but would like advice on a methodology/strategy for this. Any reference and advice is we

Answer 1

Can you accelerate time? i.e. can you write a dummy test client that forces it to do a weeks worth of calls/requests etc in a few minutes or hours? These are your biggest friend and if you don't have one - write one.

We used Netbeans a while ago to analyse heap dumps. It can be a bit slow but it was effective. Eclipse just crashed and the 32bit Windows tools did as well.

If you have access to a 64bit system or a Linux system with 3GB or more you will find it easier to analyse the heap dumps.

Do you have access to change logs and incident reports? Large scale enterprises will normally have change management and incident management teams and this may be useful in tracking down when problems started happening.

When did it start going wrong? Talk to people and try and get some history. You may get someone saying, "Yeah, it was after they fixed XYZ in patch 6.43 that we got weird stuff happening".