Understanding the Retained Size

I have used two excellent memory analysis tools that provide an important metric called Retained Size. Those tools are the Yourkit Java Profiler, which is a commercial tool worth every penny of its price, and the Eclipse Memory Analyzer, an excellent open source Java Heap Analyzer. If all you need is to do offline analysis of heap dumps the Eclipse Memory Analyzer is everything you will ever need.

Markus Kohler who is an architect at SAP and worked on the Eclipse Memory Analyzer just published an excellent article explaining the definition of the Retained Size and how to calculate it.