Thread Dump Analysis of OSB Service Callouts
Thread Dump Analysis of OSB Service Callouts
There have been numerous customer situations where the performance and response times starts
degrading under heavy load in OSB and users are unable to identify the cause for such slowdown and
areas of bottleneck.There can be appearance of STUCK Thread notifications also. Taking multiple thread
dumps at short intervals (10 - 15 seconds) from the OSB server is the first step towards identifying the
problem area. Next analyze the threads for patterns - are they waiting for database response, remote
invocation responses? etc.
One way to identify OSB related threads is look for com.bea.wli package name in the thread stacks.
There are numerous OSB related patterns and advisories included in ThreadLogic thread dump analysis
I had blogged previously. Using ThreadLogic will make the thread dump analysis part lot easier as it can
parse multiple dumps as well as identify thread progress across successive dumps.
From the above list, we can see ThreadLogic will attempt to identify threads involved in inbound Http
Proxy, Java Callouts, Proxy in WAIT state for a response (this can be for Service Callout or Sync Publish
action), Service response cache lookup (using in-built Coherence Cluster Cache), Publish action, Session
activation, Web Service Callout, response handling etc and mark them with a related health level.
Keep in mind, with Route actions, even if the remote services are slow, these wont show up in thread
dumps (unless it uses Exactly-Once QoS) as there is no thread actually waiting for the response and
threads are only used during the request invocation and actual response processing as discussed earlier.
But for the Service Callouts, two threads needs to be used (at time of actual response hand-off). For an
OSB server under heavy load and exhibiting slowness or STUCK (thread has been executing one
request for more than 10 minutes in WebLogic), ThreadLogic will report something similar in the Thread
Groups Summary node:
Under load, OSB related threads using service callouts will appear in following state
in ThreadLogic analysis. The threads might appear as hung waiting for a response notification from the
remote service endpoint.
The above snapshot shows ThreadLogic detecting and marking OSB threads involved in wait for Service
Callout response (as well as Webservice callout and STUCK). The overall OSB server instance appears
to show multiple threads waiting for Service response. The FATAL health level is due to threads
appearing in STUCK State.
In the ThreadLogic's Merge or Diff view, one can see multiple threads executing the Service Callout,
some progressing, while others remaining stuck in same code execution between dumps.
In the Merge/Diff view of ThreadLogic, the green column entries with "Progress" indicate thread
progressing between dumps while the "No Change" indicates absence of thread progress. If the thread is
in a bad state (WATCH or WARNING or FATAL) in a previous dump and not progressing in the next
successive dump, its marked in brown background while those in IGNORE or NORMAL and not showing
any progress would use yellow background.
Before we get into the solution implementation, we still need to identify those specific business services
that are contributing to the hang situation, as the solution/remedial actions have to be applied against
those specific services.
If there are very few external services that OSB invokes via Service Callout or Publish action, then we can
easily identify or detect which services are contributing to the slowdown. But if there are numerous
services, all invoked as mix of Service Callouts/Publish actions, then it becomes difficult to identify the
related remote business services and apply the corrective actions.
The thread dumps can indicate the call pattern, but cannot provide any information on which specific
Proxy or Business services were involved as the OSB framework code is generic and executes same
code paths for all proxy services or Service Callouts (similar to a JDBC code stack trace that does not
provide data about the SQL being executed). The OSB Console Management Dashboard returns
monitored statistics for services that have completed execution, but not for those still executing or
hanging. So, we would have to start analyzing web traffic patterns (access logs or web proxy logs) or
network interactions (like connections to remote side) to understand incoming load but might still not get
an entire picture which services are really hanging.
In such situations, analyzing the heap dump of the Server JVM instance can provide a gold mine of
information. Heap dumps contain a complete snapshot of every object instance loaded in memory and
details of threads executing code or acting on objects when the heap dump is generated. Useful data can
be retrieved as long as the heap dump can be analyzed by any of the commonly available Java Heap
Dump Analyzers (Eclipse MAT, JVisualVM, IBM HA, Sun JHAT, YourKit etc.).
Note: There are two separate versions of Eclipse MAT - a 32 bit and 64 bit version. You cannot just
switch the JVM to 64 bit and use Eclipse MAT 32 bit version to analyze big heap dumps (in excess of
4GB heap size). Best to download and use the 64 bit version of MAT.
Most jvms allow capturing heap dump from a running jvm instance. Depending on the vm version and
options used, some of the dump formats might not be readable from vendor-agnostic tools like Eclipse
MAT or VisualVM. Always try to capture the heap dump in HPROF format, so its not vendor specific.
JRockit versions pre-R28 cannot generate heap dumps. JRockit R28+ versions allow heap dumps in
hprof format.
format=b option tells to dump the heap in binary format instead of just string/text format.
For JRockit:
Use jrcmd (or JRMC) to generate heap dumps in hprof format (JRockit version should be R28+)
jrcmd <PID> hprofdump filename=<pathNameToFile>
Normally jrockit heap dumps get generated in the process's current working directory.
For IBM:
Doing a kill -3 on a IBM JVM process id generates a textual representation of the JVM process heap
dump.
Please refer to IBM JVM documentation for details on generating heap dump using dump agents or
programmatically (also requires some additional JVM command line arguments to dump heap in the right
format).
Most users will use heap dumps mainly to detect memory leaks or usage. But there is lot more that can
be researched from heap dumps using Object Query Language, referred as OQL. OQL provides SQL like
syntax to navigate, parse and retrieve data from java heap dump. Navigating object relationship and class
hierarchies is very simple in tools like Eclipse MAT. There are numerous OQL Tutorials and a detailed
documentation available within Eclipse MAT on OQL syntax and usage.
How can we use OQL in the OSB Service Callout situation? From the thread dumps, the code pattern
involved in Service callouts is "com.bea.wli.sb.pipeline.PipelineContextImpl$SynchronousListener" from
the Stuck threads stack trace. Lets use OQL to select all instances of this class.
Sample OQL:
select * from instanceof com.bea.wli.sb.pipeline.PipelineContextImpl$SynchronousListener
Select the OQL option at the top (4th icon under the heap dump in MAT) and execute the OQL.
Also, as a general recommendation, always use "instanceof <type>" to select all derived types just to be
safer (although there is no actual derived type from PipelineContextImpl$SynchronousListener). Eclipse
MAT will execute the OQL query against the Heap Dump and return the results for all pending
responses. The Heap Dump snapshot should have been captured from an OSB instance when it was
actively executing Service Callout or Publish invocations.
Now pick any instance from the results and the MAT Inspector tab (shows up under Window option)
should provide details of the instance - member variables, references, values etc. Now the remaining
steps of navigating the instances are mostly guess work - a mix of trial and errors as we don't really know
the class structure or relationship between members or references, that might or might not contain useful
data.
One can see there is a _service reference within the PipelineContextImpl$SynchronousListener and
its of type ..BusinessServiceImpl. Lets drill into it. Expanding it shows another member reference "_ref".
Clicking on the "_ref" shows more interesting data about the "_service". It shows the actual Business
Service name and path in its "fullname" attribute. Now we know which services are being invoked via
Service Callout or Publish action.
Use OQL and the navigation logic to get list the Business services invoked that are still pending for
response.
OQL:
SELECT toString(s._service._ref.fullname) FROM INSTANCEOF
com.bea.wli.sb.pipeline.PipelineContextImpl$SynchronousListener s
Note: Use toString(variable) to get the actual String content instead of a reference to the String in
Eclipse MAT. Use ref.toString() in JVisualVM. Other primitives will be reported directly.
There is also a "this$0" reference for the PipelineContextImpl$SynchronousListener. Drilling into it yields
"_proxy". This is the actual reference to the calling proxy. Drill into "_proxy" shows its own "_ref"
member attribute. The "fullname" of the "_ref" provides the name of the Proxy that was invoking the
Service Callout.
So, now we have traversed from instance of PipelineContextImpl$SynchronousListener to "this$0" to
"_proxy" to "_ref" to "fullname" to arrive at Proxy name. Similarly, we
navigated PipelineContextImpl$SynchronousListener instance to "_service" to "_ref" to "fullname" to
identify the Business Service. Now lets run a single OQL to get both the calling Proxy and the Business
Service executed via Service Callout or Publish action that blocks for response.
OQL:
SELECT toString(s.this$0._proxy._ref.fullname) AS ProxyService,
toString(s._service._ref.fullname) AS BusinessService FROM INSTANCEOF
com.bea.wli.sb.pipeline.PipelineContextImpl$SynchronousListener s
Lets run a more detailed OQL to report on type of remote invocation - whether its a Service Callout or
Publish action. If there is a response Handler for the proxy, then its a Service Callout; if null, its a Publish
action.
OQL:
SELECT toString(s.this$0._proxy._ref.fullname) AS InvokingProxy,
toString(s._service._ref.fullname) AS OutboundService, s._responseHandler AS
PublishOrWSCallout FROM com.bea.wli.sb.pipeline.PipelineContextImpl$SynchronousListener s
We have now analyzed the call patterns for the OSB Server threads blocked for remote response and the
remote services involved using OQL on the Heap Dump file. Next would be to focus on the correction
action. Before that, we need to briefly discus about Work Managers in WLS.