Tips and Tricks

The following tips and tricks give some helpful ideas for increasing your productivity and ease the work with Memory Analyzer.

Tip Description
Shortcuts

Ctrl-Q - Opens the Query Browser

Ctrl-H - Opens the history of executed queries.

Alt-I - Opens a popup menu that explains the icons

Quick Search Just start to type while you are in the heap editor, all the matches will be highlighted. This quick search starts is activated when 3 or more letters are provided.

Filter To show only rows of a table or tree matching a filter, click the top row, or press enter when the top row is selected. Then type the required filter for the column. Multiple filters can be used. In the example the "(1,909 filtered)" on the totals row means 1909 rows have been excluded by the filter.

For text columns a regular expression is used as a filter.

For numeric columns a numeric comparison is used as a filter. Use one of the following:
  • Intervals: 1000..10000 1%..10%
  • Upper Boundary: <=10000 <1%
  • Lower Boundary: >1000 >=5%


To move between columns of the filter row, click on the required cell, or once one cell is selected move to others with <Tab> or <Shift> <Tab>. Use <Esc> to cancel or <Enter> to finish modifying the filters, or click on another row to continue to work with the tree or table, or use <Ctrl> or <Command>+<Tab> to navigate another pane. <Tab> or <Shift>+<Tab> will then revert to normal navigation.
Resize and reorder columns To resize or rearrange columns using the keyboard select a filter entry for the column as above.
  • Use <Ctrl> or <Command> up and down cursor keys to resize the column.
  • Use <Shift> up and down cursor keys to change the position of the column.
  • Use use <Ctrl> or <Command> <Numpad plus> when not in edit filter mode to expand columns to full width.
Keyboard navigation of trees
  • Use <Numpad plus> or <enter> to expand a row.
  • Use <Numpad minus> or <enter> to collapse a row.
  • Use <Numpad multiply> to fully expand a row and its descendants. Use <Escape> to cancel further expansion.
  • Use <Numpad divide> to fully collapse all selected rows and their descendants.
Notes, Hyperlinks in Notes View Notes View recognizes and highlights object addresses. Activating the hyperlink brings up a context menu which contains actions for this particular object. Activate the hyperlink using the control key and a mouse click (or command + click).

Undo/redo in Notes View, OQL Pane There is undo/redo using Ctrl-Z / Ctrl-Y in the Notes View and the OQL Pane. The navigator pane can also be used to retrieve previous OQL statements.
Copy To Clipboard Use Ctrl-C to copy the selection to the clipboard. The data will keep its structure:

Manage the history of opened heap dumps Heap Dump History view offers a set of context menu actions to manage the history of opened heap dumps:

Delete Heap Dump action removes the heap dump from the history, but not from the file system. To find a heap dump in the file system use Explore in File System context menu action

Manage editor tabs Right click on the Heap Editor tab will open a context menu to manage the tabs. It might be very helpful when many tabs are open.

Link Inspector View with Heap Editor Object Inspector View shows the details for the single selected object. The view updates itself with every change in the selection. Sometimes it is interesting to compare two or more objects or just to capture the view. To do so use Link with Snapshot context menu. The Inspector view will keep its data. To have another Inspector view, open it via View > Inspector

Value tab in Inspector View The Object Inspector View shows the details for the single selected object. The value tab shows the value as given by the name resolver extension point.

Context menu for totals row The totals row now represents all the additional entries in a tree or table. If the totals row is selected then the context menu will operate on all the unshown entries in the tree or table. If all the rows are selected, for example using Ctrl-A, then the displayed rows are selected and the totals row is selected and then the context menu will operate on all the entries in the tree and table. Filtering operates as normal, and the rows excluded by the filter are not part of the entries obtained by selecting the totals row.

OQL autocompletion The Object Query Language (OQL) pane has syntax highlighting for OQL keywords. It also offers suggestions for class names for the SELECT FROM clause, both simple class names and regular expressions. The class name list is brought up on typing a dot '.'. Ctrl-space can also be used to bring up the list.

The regular expression list appears on typing a double-quote '"'.

Autocompletion for SELECT and WHERE clauses can also supply field names. The class for the field names is selected in the FROM clause by typing space after the class name. This brings up a context information box, and selects that class as the active class for field names.
select s from java.util.ArrayList java.util.ArrayList

Suggestions are then provided in the SELECT or WHERE clauses on typing '.' or '@' or Ctrl-space.

Attributes begin with '@' and the autocompletion is filtered based on what has been typed so far.

In SELECT and WHERE clauses there are also suggestions for methods on key Memory Analyzer objects representing contents of the snapshot.

Pressing enter adds the selected text to the command window.