Analyzing Java OutOfMemory Problems With IBM Heapdump Facility

Analyzing Java Out Of Memory Problems with IBM Heapdump Facility
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2006 SAP AG 1
Analyzing Java Out Of Memory Problems with IBM Heapdump
Facility
Applies to:
SAP NetWeaver Application Server J ava 6.40, 04s and all applications running on top of it on IBM J VM.
Summary
This is a step-by-step guide for analyzing and finding a possible cause of J ava OutOfMemory errors while
running SAP NetWeaver J ava components on top of an IBM J VM.

Author(s): Myriana Markova

Company: SAP

Created on: November 2006

Author Bio
Myriana Markova works for SAP as a developer in J ava Application Server area.



2006 SAP AG 2
Table of Contents

Applies to:........................................................................................................................................ 1
Summary.......................................................................................................................................... 1
Author Bio........................................................................................................................................ 1
Heapdump Facility When is it Useful?.......................................................................................... 3
Tools to Use..................................................................................................................................... 3
Step-by-Step Procedure for Analyzing Heapdumps........................................................................ 3
Types View................................................................................................................................... 3
Objects View................................................................................................................................ 4
Tree View..................................................................................................................................... 6
IBM HeapAnalyzer Quick Checklist................................................................................................. 9
Copyright........................................................................................................................................ 10



2006 SAP AG 3
Heapdump Facility When is it Useful?
Heapdump is a J VM facility that generates a dump of all live objects that are on the J ava heap at a certain
point in time. The IBM Heapdump contains two lines per object. The first line displays the address of the
object, its size, and type information. The second line contains a list of the memory addresses of objects that
have been referenced by that object.

When the java heap is exhausted the J VM will generate a heap dump by default. To enable signal-based
heap dumps (on SIGQUIT) one has to set in the environment variables of the user with which the J VM is
started the option IBM_HEAPDUMP=TRUE

In general one will use heapdumps as an alternative to profilers when trying to find the root cause for a
memory leak (steady increase of memory with possible plateaus until the heap is completely exhausted).

Heapdumsp are not so useful in case of an OoutOfMemory caused by a big object allocation, memory
fragmentation or native out of memory.

Tools to Use
Heap Analyzer. Newest version can be downloaded from:
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/heapanalyzer
Memory Dump Diagnostic for J ava can be downloaded from
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/downloads/memory_dump.html .
Has pretty much the same features as HeapAnalyzer, but allows for comparison of two heap dumps.
Requires IBM J DK.

The step-by-step procedure in the next section is based on HeapAnalyzer.

Step-by-Step Procedure for Analyzing Heapdumps
Types View
First check the Types view, which provides input similar to class histogram in SUN J DK. To access the
Types View choose the option Types List from the Analysis menu.
The types view allows sorting the objects by Sum of sizes, thus showing objects of which type take up the
most space in memory. Those will be usually char [], byte [] or HashMap and Hashtable entry objects.



2006 SAP AG 4

Here one can see that besides char [] and the arrays of HashMap entries two other classes are in the top 5.
Types view allows also sorting by object count revealing which are the objects with the biggest number of
instances on the heap:

Objects View
To access the Objects view choose Objects List from the Analysis menu.
In the objects view you can look at a list of all the objects in the memory dump. For each object the
following is listed:
The total size the sum of the object size and the sizes of all the objects that it can reach through
its children
The size of the object.
The number of children the object has.
The memory address of the object.


2006 SAP AG 5
The class name for the object.

Each column in the view can be sorted by clicking on the column label.
In this view one should check for objects with biggest number of children, and the objects biggest in size.



2006 SAP AG 6
The screenshots above taken from different heap dumps show sorting by number of children and by size of
the object. In the first case one can see there are 5 arrays of same size with the same number of children,
then another five of the same size and same number of children.
On the second picture on the other hand there are quite a few big byte [] which are most likely taking up the
biggest part of the heap.
In both cases one needs to find the top 5 10 of the objects in the heap tree and check the references.
Tree View
The Tree View can be accessed by selecting Tree view option from the Analysis menu.

Each node from the picture above has the following format:
TotalSize of object plus children, [Size of actual object], NumberOfChildren of the Object (Number of root
objects), Name, Address
Here one can look for a specific object by its address (right mouse button ->Choose Find an address) and
find its references.



2006 SAP AG 7

In version 1.4.1 of heap wizard one has the possibility to go directly to the object in the tree from Objects
view by clicking on the object with right mouse button and then choosing Find Object in a Tree View.



2006 SAP AG 8

Lets take one of the big byte[] from the previous example and check its references in the tree view:

Here one can see that the specific byte array has no children and its parent is an object of type
SQLServerStatement, so most likely this is a 93mb result set retrieved from the database. If all the other byte
[] have the same parent it would seem too much data is fetched on each round trip to the database and
queries might need to be optimized.
Right clicking in the Tree View allows using the following options:
Search for total size drop
Locates a drop between the total size of a parent and the biggest total size of a child. This option can
be used as a way to search for a leak suspects from a given object.
Go to the largest drop in sub trees
Takes you to the largest drop in the tree from the chosen point. The drop is the difference in the
amount of memory the object is using and the amount of memory the contained object is using.
Locate a leak suspect
Takes you to a leak suspect in the tree from the chosen point. A leak suspect is an object with a
large drop in memory size between itself and the parent containing object.
Compile leak suspects
Looks through all roots for leak suspects (as described above).

The above options will usually lead you to the biggest collections in the heap. However keep in mind that
caches and object pools are also usually pretty big collections and sometimes will be identified as leak
suspects even though they might not be leaking. Hence to avoid such detection of caches as memory leaks
one needs to take multiple dumps, and avoid if possible taking dumps at startup or right after startup, as this
is the time when the caches and object pools will start to fill.


2006 SAP AG 9
IBM HeapAnalyzer Quick Checklist

Check Type View
o Which are the objects taking up most memory? - sort by Sum of sizes
o Which are the classes with biggest number of instances? sort by Object count
Check Objects View
o Which are the biggest collections/ object arrays? sort by number of children
o Are there any huge objects with own size tens of megabytes? sort by Size
Check the Tree View
o Search for the suspicious objects identified in the previous two steps
o Check for big differences between total size of parent and children



2006 SAP AG 10
Copyright
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