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What does Ref. Object mean in Common Path to the Accumulation Point? [message #677684]

Thu, 09 June 2011 06:57

mike

Messages: 2
Registered: June 2011

Junior Member

When navigating through a leak report. After clicking on a Problem Suspect, a page is displayed with a Description, followed by a table of the Common Path to the Accumulation point.

This table has headers: Class Name, Ref. Object, Shallow Heap, Ref. Shallow Heap, Retained Heap.

What does Ref. Object refer too?

In analysis of a heap dump, I see Ref. Object indicates 9999 for an Object Array; however, the object Array has over 198578 elements inside. So what is Object Ref referring too?

Thanks

[Updated on: Thu, 09 June 2011 06:57]

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Re: What does Ref. Object mean in Common Path to the Accumulation Point? [message #677704 is a reply to message #677684]

Thu, 09 June 2011 08:12

Krum Tsvetkov

Messages: 161
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

The analysis found a group of objects of the same class (say MyClass), which taken together occupy a big portion of the memory.

In such case MAT calculates one (the shortest) path to each of these MyClass objects and tries to group them to see if there is some common reference chain which keeps the objects.

"Ref. Objects" stands for referenced objects and should mean "the number of MyClass objects referenced through this concrete path".

In case the MyClass objects are a very high number, only 10000 of them will be randomly selected for the paths calculation (in order to save time and memory).

So in your case the explanation should be something like:
there are many objects of class MyClass which taken together retain a lot of memory. 10000 of these objects were randomly selected, and 9999 of the sortest paths to them have a common beginning.

I hope this helps.
BTW, from the question I see that the reports should do better work in explaining themselves. Do you have any idea what could be improved in the naming, explanation so that it becomes easier to understand?

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Re: What does Ref. Object mean in Common Path to the Accumulation Point? [message #677708 is a reply to message #677704]

Thu, 09 June 2011 08:20

mike

Messages: 2
Registered: June 2011

Junior Member

Thank you for such a detailed and well formed response!

Perhaps Ref Objects should have included a '+', becoming Ref Objects 1000+

I think these kind of questions should go in the Memory analyzer usage guide.

Perhaps a section needs to be included explaining the layout of pages, what headings mean and how they apply to analysis.

Prety much what your answer above has done!

Many thanks

[Updated on: Thu, 09 June 2011 08:22]

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