Troubleshooting Live Java Web Applications

Operations teams tend to get nervous when debugging tools are installed on production systems. This is understandable as most people have had at least one debugging tool crash a system. However, are there tools that can be run in a production environment?

This talk will cover methods and tools that can be used to uncover and resolve performance problems arising in Java web applications that use the Spring Framework. This talk will touch on a few common problems such as slow SQL, slow web page load times, blocked threads, and exceptions in the code. It will use a variety of diagnostic tools to examine these problems including log files, jmap, jvisualvm, and New Relic. Finally, the talk will evaluate the use of these tools in a production environment, separating them into what can and cannot be realistically used in live production web applications

About Ashley Puls

Ashley Puls is a senior software engineer at New Relic Inc. which provides an all-in-one web application performance tool. She works on the Java Agent team in Portland which focuses on instrumenting Java applications.

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