ReflectionUtils slow down application startup on WebSphere [SPR-11882]

[spring-projects-issues]

Anton Zukovskij opened SPR-11882 and commented

On WebSphere application server (multi-node config) spring context initialization is very slow, our application has big classpath that causes classloader to be quite slow(see WAS_startup.png). After adding cache to ReflectionUtils.findMethod and AnnotationUtils.findAnnotation (see patch.patch) spring context seems to initialize a lot faster (see ReflectionUtils.png and AnnotationUtils.png).

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Affects: 3.1.1, 3.2.4

Attachments:

• AnnotationUtils.png (16.97 kB)
• patch.patch (4.70 kB)
• ReflectionUtils.png (22.81 kB)
• WAS_startup.png (56.53 kB)

Issue Links:

• Major performance slowdown in AnnotationUtils.findAnnotation [SPR-7630] #12286 Major performance slowdown in AnnotationUtils.findAnnotation
• Performance regression for custom autowireBean calls with many properties [SPR-11875] #16494 Performance regression for custom autowireBean calls with many properties
• AnnotationUtils should use threadsafe ConcurrentMap (contention) [SPR-12878] #17476 AnnotationUtils should use threadsafe ConcurrentMap (contention)
• Make ReflectionUtils.doWithMethods work on Java 8 default interface methods [SPR-12822] #17419 Make ReflectionUtils.doWithMethods work on Java 8 default interface methods
• Comprehensively cache annotated methods for interfaces and superclasses [SPR-16675] #21216 Comprehensively cache annotated methods for interfaces and superclasses
• ReflectionUtils cache uses up a fairly big chunk of heap even [SPR-13783] #18357 ReflectionUtils cache uses up a fairly big chunk of heap even
• Avoid repeated superclass introspection in AnnotationUtils.findAnnotation [SPR-16730] #21271 Avoid repeated superclass introspection in AnnotationUtils.findAnnotation
• Improve performance of ReflectionUtils#getUniqueDeclaredMethods [SPR-10197] #14830 Improve performance of ReflectionUtils#getUniqueDeclaredMethods

Referenced from: commits 0298a1f, 5f695a4, 682a910

Backported to: 3.2.10

[spring-projects-issues]

Juergen Hoeller commented

Thanks for pointing this out! We weren't aware that this can be such a hotspot; it's a shame that the JVM itself isn't better at caching reflection results there.

So ReflectionUtils caches Class.getDeclaredMethods() results now, as suggested. AnnotationUtils caches findAnnotation results both for classes and for methods, along the lines of what you suggested.

That said, it's not yet decided how much of this is going to be backported. The ReflectionUtils change seems like an obvious candidate for both 4.0.6 and 3.2.10 next week; however, the AnnotationUtils change leads to a harder-to-predict memory consumption profile, so it might fit for 4.0.6 still but not so much for 3.2.10, I'm afraid.

What do your upgrade plans look like? Are you aware that you can upgrade to Spring Framework 4.x even when deploying to WebSphere 7?

Juergen

[spring-projects-issues]

Anton Zukovskij commented

We've added a patched version of spring-core to our application, so we can wait for 3.2.10. As for 4.x upgrade, our project uses over 40 000 beans so we need to plan this separately.
Thank you for quick response :)