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Understanding Events

Java Flight Recorder collects data about events. Events occur in the JVM or the Java application at a specific point in time. Each event has a name, a time stamp, and an optional payload. The payload is the data associated with an event, for example, the CPU usage, the Java heap size before and after the event, the thread ID of the lock holder, and so on.

Most events also have information about the thread in which the event occurred, the stack trace at the time of the event, and the duration of the event. Using the information available in events, you can reconstruct the runtime details for the JVM and the Java application.

JFR collects information about three types of events:

JFR monitors the running system at an extremely high level of detail. This produces an enormous amount of data. To keep the overhead as low as possible, limit the type of recorded events to those you actually need. In most cases, very short duration events are of no interest, so limit the recording to events with a duration exceeding a certain meaningful threshold.