Problem

• Product Name: VisiBroker for Java
• Product Version: 7.0
• Platform/ OS version: HP-UX konjakki B.11.11 U 9000/800
• JDK: 1.5.0.11

If you are using HP JVM, OptimizeIT shows the client starts to leak when the server goes down and continue until the server is up again. If you are using Windows, AIX and Solaris platforms with IBM and Sun JVM respectively, the memory usage will stabilise after an hour for the same scenario. However, when the HP JVM is used, the memory usage never stabilises. It implies that the issue lies in the HP JVM native implementation, its default Garbage Collection behavior is not very effective in controlling its memory usage in above described scenario.

Resolution

Two possible solutions are:

A. Explicitly invoking the garbage collection through the application code. Since this is a Java memory leak issue so GC comes in handy to free the memory.
 
B. Upgrading to HP"s SDK version 1.5.0.12 and later or JDK version 5.0.12 and later.

HP JVM release documentation mentions it as a known issue, following is a related excerpt from the latest version"s release notes:

A regression in HP"s SDK versions 1.4.2.11 and 1.4.2.12 and JDK versions 5.0.04, 5.0.05, and 5.0.06 can affect the running of finalizers.

Infrequently, a finalizer is not run and the expected clean-up of any objects and resources performed in that finalizer does not occur. Symptoms can include exhaustion of available system resources including file descriptors and memory.