Summary

Developing a high-performance Java application requires an understanding of how the Java runtime operates in order to avoid correct but underperforming code. In this chapter, we addressed the issues of implicit object creation, synchronization, and threading, and their potential impact on performance.

We also discussed how to determine the optimal heap settings for your application, as well as how to determine the frequency and duration of the garbage collection cycle. Of course, after you determine the memory footprint and garbage collection profile of your application, you may want to tune your application further to use memory resources more efficiently .

Again, our goal is not to teach Java or J2EE programming but to make you aware of the key performance issues of various programming techniques. For more information about the issues raised in this chapter, we encourage you to examine some of the books in our bibliography.

This chapter also closes our introductory material. Hopefully, you understand a bit more about performance terminology and Java web sites after completing these chapters. Next, we begin a more detailed examination of web site performance with a discussion of some basic types of sites and their key stress points.