Of these I prefer Optimizeit because it runs smooth and has a lot nice
memory profiling features.  JProbe may have improved in the meantime, but
the version I have used two years ago wasn't so nice.  Optimzeit is not
really what I'd call "cheap" but it's worth the money, especially if you
want to do memory profiling (number of created instances per method and
stuff like that).

For performance measurements I use the built in profiler:
java -Xrunhprof:help will give you help on this.  There are free tools to
view the output, namely:

HP's JMeter  http://www.hp.com/products1/unix/java/hpjmeter/
PerfAnal
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Programming/perfanal/

PerfAnal is better at helping you finding the execution branch that is
responsible for most of a method's invocations, while JMeter can show
different metrics.  Above that JMeter can compare statistics of two runs
to identify where things have changed.

Then you'll need a database specific profiling tool.  DB vendors usually
ship one with the db.

There is a profiler plugin:
http://eclipsecolorer.sourceforge.net/index_profiler.html

IMHO this does not run as smooth as OptimizeIt and thus I still prefer the
standalone method with -Xrunhprof.

Regards

   robert

Used it, bought a license.  What it does, it does very well.  Further,
there is a trial, so you can see if its strengths match your problem set.

Have not used, as it does not run on my Mac.

Their support has gone way downhill since Borland bought them.  A nice
profiler, but not one I would invest in unless I had to.

Of course, if your bottlenecks are database access, a profiler will not
help a lot beyond identifying that fact.  That said, it is worth using
it just to confirm.  I had one serious problem that turned out to be
hitting the same table over and over again, several hundred thousand
times during a run, when a slightly better query and a simple cache
dropped us to one hit every five minutes.

Scott

Hello  Jonathan,

take a look at YourKit Java Profiler (http://www.yourkit.com). This is
outstanding CPU and memory profiler. It's specially designed to
profile application server memory without any performance overhead.

Best regards,
Vladimir Kondratyev