Eclipse Tools for Android

SAP has developed a memory porfiler for java applications that takes a java memory  dump, a hprof file a heap dump, and analyses that data both visually and otherwise to allow us to do queries of that data to analyze trends and change code. Earier this year they had open sourced this technology and donated it to the Eclipse Project as the sub-project called Eclipse MAT(Memory Analyzer Technology). A the same time the Android Project started working on a converter that converted Dalvik heap dump data to the hprof file format.

Several bloggers have instructions in how to use it in Android SDK 1.5( Such as here and here), the caveat being that the multiple-processes data is not yet converted to hprof format, I would imagine that would be completed in time for ANdroid SDK 2.0.

What you may have noticed that the profiling tools for Android are becoming Eclipse enabled. There is also a profiling data converter to take the traces.txt data and allow you to analyze that data using Eclipse TPTP. Notice tha the underlying data tool engine for both projects is Eclipse BiRT. That will become important in integrating with an Android Application Build System.

Google Mobile Revolution

Mobile is changing. I first made a entry into mobile in 2001 starting work at a startup and later on eneded contributing to a user interface library called SynClastUI for MIDP J2ME. Back than it was a real pain to do any mobile development and mobile fragmentation among mobile platforms was in full swing.  I imagine that the Android Goolge IO videos will be up here after a few days.

What Google has introduced is a new way to do mobile development. Not just on Android but also on Apple iPhone and Symbian and or any Webkit enabled mobile platform. On Android we can develop using Java, Java and Native, Java and web through webview, and web. But now we have on any webkit enabled device web and html5. While you will not expect to see intensive 3d games or other heavy computational applications using web you will see a whole range of new applications that can run only any webkit enabled device.

But more importantly it levels the playing field for web developers to make a transition to mobile applications without having to learn heavy duty mobile programming. Google is becoming the new mobile standards player and that is without a JCP membership or bowing down to Microsoft or other entrenched stakeholders within the Mobile Industry. Mobile is now exciting again.

Hello world!

So it begins.