Eclipse Memory Analyser (MAT)

The Java Garbege Collector releases Java objects from memory as long as no other object refers to this object.

A Java heap dump is an image of the complete Java object graph at a certain point in time. It includes all objects, Fields, Primitive types and object references.

It is possible to instruct the JVM to create automatically a heap dump in case of a OutOfMemoryError.

The Eclipse MAT helps to visualize based on Java heap dumps the references to objects and provides tools to identify potential memory leaks.

To tell the JVM to create a heapdump in case of an OutOfMemoryError use the option -XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError