Want a heap dump? Check out the jmap (Java memory map) and jhat (Java heap analysis tool) shipped with Hotspot-based JVMs (Sun, OpenJDK). Looking for a bit more?

The Java Memory Map (JMAP) utility has a method that prints a histogram of the Java heap. One side effect of the jmap command is that when it's called, it forces a garbage collection routine.

For purposes of this post, I have created two heap dumps on two totally separate applications using the Oracle JDK-provided jmap (Java Memory Map) tool to attach to the processes’s Java PIDs and ...