In this chapter, JRockit Flight Recorder was introduced. The new data model and the notion of events and data producers were explained. It was shown how to capture flight recordings, and various ways to control the Flight Recorder itself were explained. Advanced concepts in the flight recording wizard were shown, such as how to control the enablement and the options of any single event type. The main differences to the old JRockit Analyzer were discussed, such as:

We also explained how anyone can add custom events to flight recordings through a standard Java API available in the JRockit runtime jar.

Finally, the unsupported design mode was introduced, where the user interface of the Flight Recorder can be customized and even extended. We also showed how to use the design mode to export customizations to plug-ins that can be shared with others.

In the next chapter, we will discuss how the JRockit Mission Control Memory Leak Detection Tool can be used for hunting down memory leaks in Java applications.