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Using the JRockit Runtime Analyzer

# Help Us Improve BEA JRockit and the JRA Tool

The JRA tool provides an easy way to capture information about BEA JRockit when it is running in a deployment environment. JRA is designed to induce a minimal overhead when enabled, and no overhead at all when not enabled.

Because of this, the JRA can be used to capture a very "true" picture of the running system. The data that is recorded is actually what is happening and not a side effect of having the tool enabled. JRA is able to do this by being very tightly integrated into BEA JRockit.

The results of the recordings sent from customers are often used by the engineering team to guide for future improvements of BEA JRockit. We therefore invite you to help us with this effort by sending us the JRA recordings of your J2SE or J2EE application running with BEA JRockit. Once you've made a recording, just follow these steps:

1. Attach the recording file to an email
2. Describe your application in a few sentences.
3. Send the email to jrockit-improve@bea.com

# How will BEA Use These Recordings

The recordings will be analyzed and used by the development team pretty much in the same way you have analyzed your recording. The information is then used to find new ways to improve BEA JRockit. This can help you getting your application to run faster and better in the future.

# JRockit Support for JRA

Only the most recent versions of BEA JRockit supports the possibility to create JRA recordings, i.e., versions 7.0sp4, 8.1sp1, 8.1sp2, 1.4.2_x, and 5.0 (listed in chronological order).

The different BEA JRockit versions do not provide the exact same data to the recordings. Recordings of BEA JRockit 5.0 support more types of data than previous versions. You can use the latest JRA tool to view recordings from different BEA JRockit versions, but when you see a field in the tool that says "unknown", this means that this particular data was not recorded in that version of BEA JRockit. If a field says "N/A" (Not Applicable) it means that the data is supported but not applicable in that particular case (for example, no data about garbage collections in young space exists if you run with the parallel garbage collector).

# Frequently Asked Questions

The following are some questions that have frequently been asked about the JRA:

- Is the Performance Overhead of the JRA Recording in BEA JRockit Significant?
- Does BEA Guarantee the Accuracy of the JRA output?
- When JRA reports method time, is it CPU time or elapsed time?
- Is there any way to select CPU time v.s elapsed time or self v.s including children?
- What Kind of Support is Available for the JRA?
- Is There a Forum Where I can Discuss the JRA?

## Is the Performance Overhead of the JRA Recording in BEA JRockit Significant?

Performance overhead required for making a JRA recording is very low. For the applications that have been measured for BEA JRockit 8.1sp1 and 2 it has been only 1-2%. For BEA JRockit 5.0 it is a bit higher since more data is recorded. The overhead can momentarily be larger when the recording is zipped and the file is written to disk., but there is absolutely no overhead once the recording has stopped.

## Does BEA Guarantee the Accuracy of the JRA output?

Since this tool is not a supported product, BEA does not make any guarantees about the correctness of the data shown or the stability of the product itself.

## When JRA reports method time, is it CPU time or elapsed time?

It is the CPU time that is reported and the time reported is only for the method itself not its children.

## Is there any way to select CPU time v.s elapsed time or self v.s including children?

No, you can only see elapsed time in the CPU and elapsed time of the method, not its children.

## What Kind of Support is Available for the JRA?

BEA does not provide support or answer questions about JRA; however, the engineering team gladly collects comments about the tool and looks at recordings of you application to improve future versions of the tool.

## Is There a Forum Where I can Discuss the JRA?

If you have any questions you are welcome to share them in the BEA JRockit general interest newsgroup, which is monitored by our engineering team. To access the newsgroup, go to:

>     http://newsgroups.bea.com/cgi-bin/dnewsweb?cmd=xover&group=jrockit.developer.interest.general&utag=