JDJ: Would you tell us a little about the recently released NuMega DevPartner 2.0 Java Edition?
O'Brien: DevPartner Java Edition is a suite of productivity tools created to help developers build reliable, high-performance applications with Java technology. The suite contains a performance analyzer, memory profiler, thread analyzer and code coverage analyzer. Using the new DevPartner Remote Agent software, this release provides extensive server-side support for Java application servers, Enterprise JavaBeans and servlets on Solaris, Linux and Windows NT/2000.

JDJ: How does DPJ help Java developers?
O'Brien: Today's Web-enabled applications use many different technologies from HTML and JavaScript to JSP, servlets and EJBs. When these technologies are integrated into a Web-based app, developers usually end up spending a substantial amount of time chasing bugs and performance problems involving a number of components running on several different systems. DevPartner Java Edition helps developers quickly solve problems with runtime performance, memory utilization and multithreading impact application reliability, performance and overall software quality.

JDJ: The memory profiler is new to DPJ. How do you see this tool assisting Java developers?
O'Brien: Memory allocations are very expensive in Java, so when your code makes small allocations repeatedly, it can cause a noticeable degradation in performance. Inefficient use of memory can further compound this effect by depleting resources, causing serious reliability problems. Memory utilization is particularly critical with server-side Java, where small amounts of poorly utilized memory can quickly become fatal when the problem is multiplied by thousands or tens of thousands of simultaneous users.

The DevPartner memory profiler automatically locates memory-intensive and allocation-intensive Java methods and lines of code. With an accurate profile of a Java program's memory use, developers can improve the runtime performance and reliability of their application by optimizing methods that perform small, frequent allocations, and methods that waste or consume the most memory.

JDJ: What can DPJ do for server-side Java, specifically for servlets, EJBs and JavaServer Pages?
O'Brien: DPJ supports distributed application analysis using the new DevPartner Remote Agent software on remote Solaris, Linux and Windows systems. DevPartner Remote Agents can gather runtime session data on Java servlets, JavaServer Pages, JavaBeans, Enterprise JavaBeans, JavaScript, applets and other components. The runtime data collected from these distributed components are combined into a single end-to-end session file that can be analyzed on the developer's console.

DevPartner Java Edition is compatible with a range of popular server-side Java hosting environments including BEA WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, Allaire JRun, Apache JServ, Sun ServletRunner, Microsoft IIS and others.

JDJ: What's unique to DPJ that isn't found in other Java productivity tools and suites?
O'Brien: DevPartner Java Edition offers more breadth, depth, performance and compatibility than any other Java productivity tool suite. For starters, it contains four discrete tools, each tuned for a specific function - performance profiling, memory profiling, thread analysis and code coverage analysis. Next, it supports a wide range of Java application servers, Web servers and servlet engines across Solaris, Linux and Windows platforms. DevPartner Java Edition is also the first suite of its kind to support Web scripting languages like HTML, JavaScript, JSP and ASP.

DevPartner Java Edition works with standard VMs and maintains higher levels of performance than other Java tools. Most of the other Java tools on the market have a large memory footprint and can easily consume more than 20MB of Java resources just to load a single tool. DevPartner Java Edition tools run outside the VM using a minimal, on-the-fly instrumentation technique that's totally transparent to the user. It's fast, easy to use and provides more visibility into JIT-compiled code and native methods, where other tools usually fail.

JDJ: Will the DPJ tools work with any Java VM?
O'Brien: DevPartner Java Edition supports all the popular VMs with no special modifications, including Sun Java 1.1.7, 1.1.8, Java2, derived VMs from Symantec, Borland, Oracle and IBM, as well as the Microsoft VM.

JDJ: Which Java development environments does DPJ work with?
O'Brien: DPJ integrates with the most popular Java development environments - WebGain's [formerly Symantec] VisualCafé, Borland JBuilder, Oracle JDeveloper and IBM VisualAge for Java. It's also compatible with other development environments based on the Sun 1.1 or Java 2 SDKs.