Tools for analysis Garbage Collection

offline:
- GCHisto, GVViewer
online:
- VisualGC for VisualVM

DirtiesContext

Test annotation which indicates that the ApplicationContext associated with a test is dirty and should be closed:

• after the current test, when declared at the method level
  
• after each test method in the current test class, when declared at the class level with class mode set to AFTER_EACH_TEST_METHOD
  
• after the current test class, when declared at the class level with class mode set to AFTER_CLASS
  

Read more here: http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/3.0.x/javadoc-api/org/springframework/test/annotation/DirtiesContext.html

Jaxp13XPathTemplate - utility for extracting data by XPath fom XML

Jaxp13XPathTemplate - it is a java class from Spring Framework for extracting data by XPath from XML.

Example:

String id = xpathTemplate.evaluateAsString("/products/product/id", productRequest);

More here: http://static.springsource.org/spring-ws/site/apidocs/org/springframework/xml/xpath/Jaxp13XPathTemplate.html

STS 3.0.0 released

SpringSource Tool Suites 3.0.0 has been released. It is reorganized, open-sourced, and put at GitHub.
Read more here: http://blog.springsource.org/2012/08/13/springsource-tool-suites-3-0-0-released-reorganized-open-sourced-and-at-github/

JDK 6 end of support extended

Oracle has announced that the End Of Public Updates for Oracle's JDK 6 has changed. It will be not November 2012. The last release of a JDK 6 update will be in February 2013.

More info here: https://blogs.oracle.com/henrik/entry/java_6_eol_h_h

@SafeVarargs in Java 7

If you annotate method with an annotation @SafeVarargs, the compiler will suppress the warning of unsafe operation

Random number in java 7

Since java 7 you should use ThreadLocalRandom.current().nextInt() over Math.random() for generating random numbers. ThreadLocalRandom use random seed per thread, so threads do not compete for it.