Description Randall Theobald 2009-04-15 11:11:30 EDT

Often when doing memory analysis, I like to see a "spider" view of an instance. That is, which instances directly reference my current instance, and which instances are directly referenced by my current instance.

For example:

          Object_ID Depth Size Parents Children Class

parents:  003F41DB  3     105   1       23       java.lang.Object[]

current:  003F1234  4     24    1       1        java.lang.WeakReference

children: 00123454  5     24    1       0        java.lang.Integer


where the parents and children section might contain numerous parents, and each parent and child is clickable and directly makes that instance the current instance. This type of view can often provide information not apparent from other views in MAT (in my experience) since incoming and outgoing references are typically 2 separate views in MAT.