Azul Systems launches Java platform monitoring tool

Azul Systems today launched an open-source software test tool called jHiccup designed to monitor an enterprise application’s Java Runtime Environment (JRE).

Server-side Java-based applications, such as online retail applications, use JREs.

JHiccup gives software engineers and systems operators graphs of response time when processing online transactions against elapsed time for that server-side Java-based application.

Christmas is a critical period for online retailers and any big hiccup in performance will result in delays in processing customer orders in firms' retail web applications. This would be serious for enterprises because customers would likely go elsewhere for their online purchases.

Azul Systems CTO Gil Tene said, “The purpose of jHiccup is to simply add a capability to your application to check that the Java platform you’re running on is working properly.

“The tool can be added simply to applications and can monitor those applications by producing log files from which so-called hiccup charts are produced.”

JHiccup's hiccup charts can be used to determine whether any problems are due to the underlying Java runtime platform or are due to faults in application code. The charts show spikes where hiccups occur, and where there are problems with the JRE [see picture].

"Any hiccup that jHiccup detects that freezes the system for say half a second, means that the application also froze with it. In that case you could not have avoided the hiccup," said Tene.

"But if these hiccups are big and correlate with your external observations, you need to look at your JRE rather than your application.

“Alternatively if the hiccups are tiny on the jHiccup chart, and your application is still showing glitches and big pauses when executing, then your application code is doing something wrong."

JHiccup is available to download free from Azul Systems’ website.