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ZeroTurnaround Launches 'Interactive' Java Profiler, XRebel

• By John K. Waters
• June 20, 2014

Java toolmaker ZeroTurnaround has announced the general availability of its new Java profiler, XRebel. The company has been working on what it describes as an "always-on, interactive" profiler for more than a year, and company Founder and CEO Jevgeni Kabanov says that from the beginning it was meant to be something different.

"It's about who we designed it for," Kabanov told this site. "The typical Java profiler is meant for performance experts who use it in dedicated sessions to generate lot of data that needs to be interpreted. XRebel is almost the opposite of that. It's meant for everyone, including developers and QA. It runs all the time in the background while you are writing and testing code. It detects performance issues, lets you know that you have them, and then if you click on it, it shows you right away exactly the drill down necessary to fix that issue."

In other words, XRebel 1.0 is designed to allow Java developers to find and fix problems as they code. The company says it can be used to detect a range of issues, including HTTP session bloat and leaks, SQL query inefficiencies and time sinks, and hidden exceptions. The tool supports WebSphere, WebLogic, Tomcat, JBoss/Wildfly, Jetty and Glassfish.

"This is a different use pattern," Kabanov said. "XRebel enables developers to continuously test and iterate on their code, to catch more production-related errors before they commit code, and to better understand their codebase. It creates this awesome feedback loop in development that developers didn't have before."

The company gave XRebel a broad beta test at more than 500 organizations, Kabanov said. He calls it a great first step, but adds that the company has plans to expand the product's capabilities in the near future. Look for Web services support in the next version, and down the road, support for MongoDB and other NoSQL databases.

The Tartu, Estonia-based company is probably best known for its JRebel plug-in, which integrates with the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and app servers on the class loader level, and allows developers to make on-the-fly code changes in Java class files. The company's research and content organization, Rebel Labs, publishes free, vendor-neutral technical resources.