MEMORY UTILIZATION ANALYSIS

The performance of a monitored system is profiled based on sampling a portion of its operations. In one embodiment, the monitored system allocates memory for objects created as instances of classes and automatically performs regular garbage collection to reclaim memory. A variety of sampling techniques are used to minimize the impact on the performance of the monitored system. Characteristic memory utilization patterns can then be estimated for classes based on the samples. The patterns may be presented to a user for review and analysis. Characteristics of the monitored system's performance may be presented in an interactive interface that allows the user to trace the cause of the presented memory utilization patterns, and provides statistics regarding memory allocation and release to guide the user in this analysis.