Optimising Application Performance

Learn how to tune the JVM and make good coding choices for optimal performance

What can cause performance issues in our applications, and how to resolve them.
The choices available to us as developers at design-time - how to make good coding choices for optimal performance.
How to configure the virtual machine to provide better performance at run-time.
Along the way we'll be learning about the Just In Time compiler, how the virtual machine manages memory, performance testing and benchmarking, decompiling bytecode and more.
This course is written for Java versions 8 and 11. We have also revalidated the content for Java 17 - the only differences are that some of the tools are included with the OpenJDK and some are downloadable separately.
This course is also available as a book - find out more and download a free preview chapter: Java Application Performance and Memory Management.

Pre-requisites

A working knowledge of basic Java programming techniques

Contents - Contains 10 hours of video - equivalent to 3 days of live training

Having problems? check the errata for this course.

1	Introduction	Preview 10m 11s
What we mean by performance, versions of Java, and the JVM, and an outline of the course.
2	JIT compilation	Watch 37m 14s
What happens when our application runs, and how to monitor and tune the code cache.
3	Selecting the JVM	Watch 23m 4s
How to pick the right JVM (32 bit or 64 bit) for optimal performance, and tuning when native code compilation takes place.
4	Introduction to how memory works	Watch 22m 0s
The roles of the stack and the heap for storing primatives and objects.
5	Passing objects between methods	Watch 20m 13s
Variables are passed by value in Java, and for objects this means that it's the reference that is passed across. We understand why this is important and then we also consider the final keyword.
6	Memory Exercise 1	Watch 10m 22s
Exercise to test our knowledge of how memory works in Java.
7	Escaping references	Watch 44m 0s
Understanding what escaping reference are and the performance impact of strategies to remove them.
8	Memory Exercise 2	Watch 12m 17s
Exercise to find and fix escaping references
9	The Metaspace and JVM optimisations	Watch 20m 24s
The role of the metaspace, and some optimisations that the JVMs make for managing memory.
10	Tuning the JVM's memory settings	Watch 30m 1s
Tuning the heap size, and string pool table.
11	Introducing garbage collection	Watch 26m 49s
The general concept of GC, the finalise() method, and trying to force a collection.
12	Monitoring the heap	Watch 22m 59s
We use the JVisualVM tool to monitor the heap and see how it can help us find a soft-leak.
13	Analyzing a heap dump	Watch 8m 31s
We use the Eclipse Memory Analysis Tool to view the contents of the heap.
14	Generational GC	Watch 22m 7s
How the heap is split up into regions to make garbage collection more efficient, and what's really going on when a garbage collection takes place.
15	Garbage collector tuning & selection	Watch 35m 58s
Understanding and choosing the different garbage collection algorythms, and tuning the garbage collection process.
16	Using a profiler to analyse application performance	Watch 46m 2s
Using a profiler to understand the performance of an application.
17	Assessing Performance	Watch 26m 1s
Using micro and macro benchmarking to determine whether code changes lead to better or worse performance.
18	Benchmarking with JMH	Watch 13m 20s
Using the JMH tool to create a robust benchmarking environment.
19	Performance and benchmarking exercise	Watch 21m 6s
We use what we have learned in the last few chapters to improve our project.
20	How lists work	Watch 34m 7s
Understanding how the different list types work in Java, and how the choice of list can affect performance for your application.
21	How maps work	Watch 33m 21s
Understanding how the different map types work in Java, and how the choice of map can affect performance for your application.
22	Other coding choices	Watch 23m 37s
In this chapter we'll find out the answers to: Should you always use a Stringbuilder for best performance? Does a big decimal perform worse than a double? Are streams better than loops?
23	GraalVM	Watch 26m 22s
Learn how to use the experimental GraalVM compiler to further optimise your applications, and create native images of your code.
24	Other JVM languages	Watch 25m 13s
Find out how to evaluate whether kotlin, scala or other JVM language code will be more or less performance by analysing the bytecode it produces.
25	Course Summary	Watch 3m 1s
A couple of other topics worth mentioning and goodbye.

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Optimising Application Performance

Pre-requisites

Contents - Contains 10 hours of video - equivalent to 3 days of live training

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