What advantages have a commercial Java profiler over the free ones, e.g. the one in Netbeans?

Question

Occasionally I have to do some profiling work on Java code, and I would like to know why I should have my boss investigate in a commercial profiler as opposed to just use th

Answer 1

From my experience, YourKit profiler is most usable one. Small usability things really make the difference, but also it is most comprehensive one, containing:

• most comprehensive and usable memory snapshots (working also with 1GB+ heaps), with detail object view and primitive data, for every single object. (for example in hashmap you can see if objects are evenly distributed or most are stored in same bucket!) This detail of memory snapshots and its ease of use is my main reason for yourkit.
• very little overhead (far less then many other profilers I used)
• comparing snapshots
• J2EE profiling
• deadlock detector, lock status (I think it still misses java.concurrent.locks, bud for synchronized it is great)

Among other things, it's also constantly improving, so who knows what is future holding :)