Eclipse Memory Analyzer 1.3.0 Release Review

Type
Release
State
Successful
End Date of the Review Period

Reviews run for a minimum of one week. The outcome of the review is decided on this date. This is the last day to make comments or ask questions about this review.

Release

1.3.0

Description

Improvements and bug fixes in the Object Query Language (OQL) functionality

  • autocompletion in the OQL editor
  • array indexing in OQL
  • results from OQL queries can be used in comparison

Java 7 - Adapted queries extracting information from well-known objects to the new internals of the objects (e.g. String, Properties, ...)

 

Other improvements

  • Larger heap dumps can now be processed
  • Fixed performance problem in computing the dominator tree
  • Enable comparison for Trees
  • Add a convenient "Thread Overview" button
  • Allow selection of which snapshot to analyze when core file contains snapshots from multiple Java runtimes (IBM System dumps) or sucessive snapshots from the same JVM (hprof agent dumps)
API Certification

The project leadership certifies that the APIs in this release are "Eclipse Quality".

Architectural Issues

Architecture is settled and performs well on multi-GB heap dumps.

MAT provides a set of extension points for adding additional analysis capabilities on top of the ones built into the tool.

Security Issues

No known security issues

Non-Code Aspects

Documentation

Localisation/Externalization - Strings are externalized

Usability Details
  • The Memory Analyzer tool is very helpful for troubleshooting of OutOfMemoryErrors. It can be also used proactively to analyze and reduce memory consumption.
  • The tool provides rich and responsive UI. The User Interface Guidlines have been followed.
  • The sheer number of heap inspections can be overwhelming for a novice user. To reduce complexity so called "suspects" analysis is provided, which provides a summary of potential problems found in the heap dump with a single click.
End of Life
  • No features are removed
  • No API has been deprecated / removed
Standards
  • MAT can work with the following heap dumps:
    • HPROF binary dumps
    • IBM PHD dumps
    • IBM System dumps
    • Further parsers can be provided using via extension point
  • MAT Requires
    • Execution Environment J2SE-1.5
    • Eclipse Platform 3.4 – 3.8, 4.2-
    • BIRT Chart Runtime 2.3.0 or higher
Communities

Contributors and committers

  • Committers (total number 6): 4 from SAP, 2 from IBM
  • Active Committers are 3: 1 from SAP, 2 from IBM
  • Recently increasing number of non-committer contributions done via Bugzilla

Adopters

  • Integrated into SAP NetWeaverCE
  • Integrated into IBM Support Assistant
  • Integrated in Motorola’s MOTODEV Studio for Android
  • Some additional extensions to MAT being written as shown by questions on the forum

Users

  • A large user community (for the special niche of the tool)
  • The standalone RCP application has over 3000 downloads per week
  • Part of Eclipse simultaneous release update site (downloads not counted)
  • Forums and Bugzilla used as communication channel
This release is part of Kepler

Release Review