Java 8 Performance and Tuning

Course Objectives

This “skills-centric” course is about 50% hands-on lab and 50% lecture, designed to train attendees in advanced development skills, coupling the most current, effective techniques with the soundest industry practices. Working in a hands-on learning environment, guided by our expert team, attendees will learn to:

• List possible metrics for measuring software performance
• Explain the effect of OO design on software performance
• List and describe types of benchmarks and the criteria that should be considered when constructing a benchmark plan
• Explore the most useful targets for profiling, and the most common tools/techniques for profiling
• Describe two strategies for improving performance as a result of profiling data
• List and explain the five most common problem areas for good performance with Java
• Use the JDK to collect runtime profiling data
• Successfully read the profiling data generated by the JDK to detect performance bottlenecks
• Instrument your own code to collect method execution time data
• Learn code optimization techniques relating to object management, exceptions, threads, and serialization
• Understand the JVM Architecture from the perspective of performance
• Examine and work with Java language features that can impact performance
• Understand optimizing data structures in Java
• Choose the correct Collection for the task
• Leverage the built in Collections algorithms to enhance your code performance and security
• Examine the many Java 8 features to understand their impact on performance

Need different skills or topics?  If your team requires different topics or tools, additional skills or custom approach, this course may be further adjusted to accommodate.  We offer additional Java, JEE and Java for Web application development, design, testing, services, application security and other related topics that may be blended with this course for a track that best suits your needs. Our team will collaborate with you to understand your needs and will target the course to focus on your specific learning objectives and goals.

Working within in a dynamic, hands-on learning environment, guided by our expert team, attendees will:

• List possible metrics for measuring software performance
• Explain the effect of OO design on software performance
• List and describe types of benchmarks and the criteria that should be considered when constructing a benchmark plan
• Explore the most useful targets for profiling, and the most common tools/techniques for profiling
• Describe two strategies for improving performance as a result of profiling data
• List and explain the five most common problem areas for good performance with Java
• Use the JDK to collect runtime profiling data
• Successfully read the profiling data generated by the JDK to detect performance bottlenecks
• Instrument your own code to collect method execution time data
• Learn code optimization techniques relating to object management, exceptions, threads, and serialization
• Understand the JVM Architecture from the perspective of performance
• Examine and work with Java language features that can impact performance
• Understand optimizing data structures in Java
• Choose the correct Collection for the task
• Leverage the built in Collections algorithms to enhance your code performance and security
• Examine the many Java 8 features to understand their impact on performance

Need different skills or topics?  If your team requires different topics or tools, additional skills or custom approach, this course may be further adjusted to accommodate.  We offer additional Java, JEE and Java for Web application development, design, testing, services, application security and other related topics that may be blended with this course for a track that best suits your needs. Our team will collaborate with you to understand your needs and will target the course to focus on your specific learning objectives and goals.

Course Prerequisites

This in an intermediate level Java programming course geared for experienced Java developers seeking to improve their Java application performance.

Follow-On Courses / Take After: Our core Java training courses provide students with a solid foundation for continued learning based on role, goals, or their areas of specialty.  Our Java developer learning paths offer a wide variety of follow-on courses such as:

• Continued Java & JEE training: Intermediate to Advanced Java, JEE Essentials, Java for Web, Spring / Spring Boot, Microservices / Web Services / REST, Reactive Java Programming / RxJava, Tuning & Performance, Design Patterns & More
• TDD / Test Driven Development, JUnit / Unit Testing, Agile development training
• Secure Java Coding / Java Security and secure application development training
• Mobile developer / Android training

Please see the Related Courses tab for specific Pre-Requisite courses, Related Courses or Follow On training options. Our team will be happy to help you with recommendations for next steps in your Learning Journey.

Course Agenda

Please note that this list of topics is based on our standard course offering, evolved from typical industry uses and trends. We’ll work with you to tune this course and level of coverage to target the skills you need most.

Session:  Writing High Performance Applications 

• Memory Management Issues
• Memory Consumption of Java Data Types
• CPU Performance Issues
• Threading Issues
• Profiling and Benchmarking
• Java Microbenching Harness (JMH)
• Code Optimization Techniques
• Design Optimization Techniques

Session:  Effective Java 

• Creating and Destroying Objects
• Factory Methods
• Impact of Finalizers
• Classes and Interfaces
• Immutability
• Composition vs. Inheritance
• Exceptions
• Threading Constructs to Avoid

Session: Data Structures

• Efficient Strings and Arrays
• Efficient Use of Collections
• Choosing a Collection
• Tuning Collection Constructors

Session: Performance and Java 8

• Performance Across Java Versions
• Impact of Java 8 Concurrency Updates
• Tiered Compilation
• Nashorn versus Java 7's JavaScript Engine
• Lambda Expressions versus Inner Classes
• Impact of Streams versus Collections
• Date/Time Classes
• I/O Stream Recommendations
• Encoding/Decoding
• Strings and Spring Interning

Course Materials

Course Materials: Each participant will receive a Student Guide with course notes, code samples, software tutorials, step-by-step written lab instructions, diagrams and related reference materials and resource links. Students will also receive the project files (or code, if applicable) and solutions required for the hands-on work.

Hands-On Setup Made Simple! Our dedicated tech team will work with you to ensure our ‘easy-access’ cloud-based course environment is accessible, fully-tested and verified as ready to go well in advance of the course start date, ensuring a smooth start to class and effective learning experience for all participants. Please inquire for details and options.