Contents of This Book

Chapter 1 gives general guidelines on how to tune. If you do not yet have a tuning strategy, this chapter provides a methodical tuning process.

Chapter 2 covers the tools you need to use while tuning. Chapter 3 looks at the SDK, including Virtual Machines (VMs) and compilers.

Chapter 4 through Chapter 12 cover various techniques you can apply to Java code. Chapter 12 looks at tuning techniques specific to distributed applications.

Chapter 13 steps back from the low-level code-tuning techniques examined throughout most of the book and considers tuning at all other stages of the development process.

Chapter 14 is a quick look at some operating system-level tuning techniques.

Chapter 15 through Chapter 18 are new in this edition, providing the information you need to tune J2EE applications. Chapter 15 describes tuning considerations that are common to all J2EE applications. Chapter 16 looks at specifics for tuning JDBC, including optimizing transactions and SQL, while Chapter 17 provides important information for speeding up servlets and JSPs. Chapter 18 describes performance considerations for Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs).

Finally, Chapter 19 covers a wide range of additional resources where you can learn more about Java performance tuning.

Substantive chapters include a performance-tuning checklist at the end. Use these lists to ensure that you have not missed any core tuning techniques while you are tuning.