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How to test the performance of a java application?

I've created a stand alone java desktop application using Netbeans. I want a way to test the performance of my application. I need some tool with the help of which my application can be evaluated. I heard about Software metrics, is this related to my context. Or is there any tool or plugin available in Netbeans through which I can test.

Have a look at the Netbeans Profiler:
http://netbeans.org/features/java/profiler.html

Netbeans has one of the best profilers going for Java apps, it runs well and provides as much detail as you want. Since you're using Netbeans I'd take advantage of it!
In terms of tutorials, there's one here about memory leaks and how to debug / discover them using the profiler. Once you get going with it the other features should come pretty easily.

Silverlight analog in Java environment

Is there any analog to Microsoft Silverlight in Java World? The requirement is to use native language and share some already written libraries while hosting in a web browser on client side. Silverlight is a great technology, but it doesn't work on Linux. Please don't remind me of Moonlight. Please don't suggest ActionScript as it's not Java.
Thanks.

JavaFX springs immediately to mind, which sort of hangs around in the Flash/Silverlight space. It's pretty immature, though, and not heavily used.
For a more general RCP platform, try Eclipse RCP.

You could look at GWT or Echo2
You may find this review http://vinaytechs.blogspot.com/2009/09/comparison-matrix-of-ajax-frameworks-zk.html interesting as it covers many other options and lists the different features of each.

trying to decide between asp.net and jsp

I am wondering if anyone can shed some lights on the situation. I am about to start a project and trying to figure out what solution is best to go with asp.net or java jsp pages
I have personally worked alot with .net and am really happy with the framework and Visual studio as IDE I find it easy to work with and there is a massive community support behind .net, i can get alot done quickly
I have not every written anything use java jsp, there will be a learning curve here , so my experience is limited here. however after seeing jira i am very impressed with its capabilities, it has changed alot since the old days ( java 1.2 ) that i used to work with, and the fact that it runs under linux is a huge plus, so i am trying to decide is the learning curve, worth the price ?
so given the situation above what would you recommended?
Thanks,
Amir

JIRA is issue and bug tracking software; it can function with any development environment, so it has no bearing on your choice of development platform.
If this is an important project or has time or budget constraints, use the platform you are familiar with that works for you.
If you have the time and inclination to learn a new platform, there is certainly merit in that. More importantly though, who will maintain this when you are not around? Will it be deployed to an environment that is already .NET-centric?
Few apps are deployed in a vacuum (unless you work for NASA), so consider all of the peopleware issues as well as the technical ones.

If .Net is what you're used to and the only real advantage you care about in JSP is that it runs on Linux why not take a look at Mono?
http://www.mono-project.com/ASP.NET

Ya jira is in jsp and is a magnificent tool. But its not like you could not have developed something similar in ASP.NET.
Personally, i always go with a technology that i am confortable in. In a professional environment we have to deal with several other factors like time, teams knowledge in various technologies, deployment and maintainence.
you should concentrate on your core tech and do it in ASP.NET as you havent done anything in java before.

Why Java is still used in web development?

Why Java is still used in web development? I'm just curious..

There are a number of reasons:
1. It is by no means a dead language. There are thousands of Java developers out there.
2. Many available Java developers means that it relatively easy to find maintenance programmers if necessary.
3. The Java / J2EE architecture is robust and reasonably elegant. It makes it possible to architect well built applications.
4. The free tools available for it are enterprise ready. For example, Apache / Tomcat / JBoss are a solid foundation to build a web-app from.
5. Excellent support for developers. Eclipse is one of the best developer platforms available. Ant and Maven support for Java is excellent.
6. There is a good availability of third-party (and open-source) libraries and Eclipse plug-ins for most of the additional functionality that might be needed but does not come in the core libraries.
7. There is also great support tools from commercial vendors: ORacle; IBM / Rational; etc.
8. Updated versions with newer language constructs are constantly being developed.
In short, it is a good tool for the job. It is compares favourably to other development platforms (.Net, Ruby, etc), and perhaps is better than some.

Simple. It's a cross platform environment, that is clearly defined, and controlled. Sure, Sun has a big deal of say in what is available in the Java environment, but there is plenty of 3rd party support and development in the Java environment.
Yes, Java applications start up slightly slower than Native applications, but take a look at VUZE... Once it's started, it's nearly native speed (or at least it was when I was using it). With the JIT (Just in Time) compilers, code caching, and other features, there isn't much of a reason that there would be a major speed penalty...

One big reason I think is because it's platform independent meaning they can easily run on all operating systems as long as you have the Java Runtime Environment installed. This could allow you to, for example, compile code in Windows and deploy on Unix.

I would also add that while this is only a con against .Net, your application server doesn't have to be Windows so it is cheaper to throw more hardware at it.

For the same reason as why COBOL and FORTRAN still exist. Because the language has proven itself to be robust and reliable.
Compare it with cars. Some people want the latest models because it has more power, better speed, improved features and whatever more. Others will just use a reliable car that's made to last for many years without much need for additional maintenance. Some buy a new car every 3 years, others will use their cars for half a century or more.

When talking about Java & the web, people seem to happily mix things by concentrating on Java applications deployed with Web Start (or even Applets), and forgetting that Java is a common language for implementing plain old dynamic web sites (or web applications). The latter is especially true for larger, more "enterprisey" systems. Even if on the desktop Java never really took off, on the server side it certainly did.
Without going into much detail, a couple of reasons why Java is used for creating web sites / applications:
It's a tried and true approach for building large-scale web apps. Either using just the basic (Java EE) technologies of Servlets and JSP, or newer frameworks built on top of those, such as JSF, Wicket or Google Web Toolkit. (Just one example of high scalability: Gmail is implemented in Java, using Google Web Toolkit.)
A mind-boggling amount of Java libraries exist, for all kinds of tasks — both open-source and commercial ones. If you need some in the backend of your app it may make a lot of sense to do the whole app using the same technology.
There are a lot of skilled Java developers out there — something that may affect tech desicions when launching (larger) projects
When creating a web interface for, or integrating into, an existing Java enterprise system (which are common) it may be beneficial to use the same language
Edit: I also agree with Doug about the tools and developer support. For example, IntelliJ IDEA may well be the most advanced IDE for any language (and I've heard this also from people who've used Eclipse and Visual Studio extensively... ;-) )

It's ubiquitous. The tools are great across the board. It's powerful. The community is huge. There is an amazing amount of available libraries / products / toolkits / frameworks. The JVM is great.

You can build cathedrals with this language. Those tend to stand for centuries.

Since Java doesn't run on the iPad, doesn't that hurt Java web development? Developing a web application that supports desktop and mobile is a possible path, but if your site uses Java or Flash, you have eliminated that opportunity.
We have a web application that is for both desktop and mobile (supports swiping, zooming, and such using jQuery). We decided against Java, Flash, and Silverlight because they do not work with iPad. The iPad is a growing base and web applications will have to keep up to support it.
It will be interesting to see how this affects web development with Java... time will tell.

Webservices - Java or .NET?

I need to implement webservices in an upcoming project and wanted to know what are the main points to base the decision on whether to implement using java or .NET
I'm a C++er...

If you're a Java shop use Java. If you're a .NET shop use .NET.
There really is no difference that makes one of the two languages superior to the other in regards to web services.

Possible consideration - .NET pre 3.5 only provided support for SOAP based services, but I believe the 3.5 WCF offers REST and SOAP now.

There's no real difference from programmer's point of view (implementation).
For me, a reason to pick Java is that all tools and infrastructure are free/open source. OS, deployment web server, databases, IDEs and developer tools.

I have plenty of experience with both, and both will certainly do the job.
However I tend to prefer Java over .Net for things like web services for the following reasons:
It's cross-platform, which gives you much better options on the hosting side (e.g. running a big Linux cluster on Amazon EC2)
The library ecosystem is larger and more mature, especially on the server side.
I prefer the more flexible open source philosophy to "the only way is Microsoft". Vendor lock-in is always a bad idea for your enterprise architecture in the long run.
You can optionally use awesome languages like Clojure or Scala on the JVM
Ultimately though, I'd go with the one your team has the most skills with. This will determine what you are most productive with, which is usually most important if your main objective is to deliver value quickly.

It's a personal decision, usually determined by the technology already in place or the skill set of the developer(s) writing the services.

i've never really developed web services in java, but i have in .NET and if you're using Visual Studio they're an absolute cinch to whip up (i expect they're a little more difficult to do without the aid of VS).
if you're already working in java, and don't have any .NET stuff in place, stick with java - it'll save you a lot of money (if you were to get Visual Studio in, as i mentioned), and possibly some time involved in learning the specifics of .NET

In my experience, Web Services are a bit more tightly integrated into Visual Studio than they are into Java's editors.
The Eclipse IDE doesn't even have JAX-WS (Java standard web services stack) support built in, opting to use Apache Axis 1 instead.
Netbeans supports JAX-WS, though.

I personally prefer .NET to Java for many reasons I don't want to go through, since it doesn't really matter and is more a personal preference than a strict guideline I can recommend.
If you have Java infrastructure in place or using a platform other than Windows for your server applications, I strongly suggest Java. However, if you don't have anything in place and running on Windows platform, .NET is pretty cool in that area (WCF/ASMX/WSE/...).

As you say you're a C++ - er you'll probably find .NET easier as you can target it directly from C++.

I'm a Java guy, but I think Web Services are easier to code in .NET. Visual Studio takes care of everything, in Java it takes a bit to get started.
A bit of a problem in some projects with JAX-WS is, that SUN ships the "old" version 2.0 with Java 6. If you want to use the current version, it's some work to make it run with Java 5 and Java 6.
If your app must be portable, you should obviously choose Java. Otherwise I would say it's just a choice of your preferred language, since the above issues are really small (maybe you want to choose Axis or something else anyway, I haven't worked with something other than JAX-WS yet).

IMO if you want to do SOAP, then its a heck of a lot easier to use .NET and WCF. However, I've found REST to be a bit tricky with WCF, and had to implement a custom XML parser to do it instead of using their built-in one.
You probably want to consider your hosting environment too. If you are going to serve this from Windows hardware, you can drop .NET WCF web services into IIS. If you are going to run a Linux/Solaris server, then it isn't even a question...

I suggest implementation with JSP ,it provides a robust platform for development
I prefer JSP to ASP or any microsoft techonolgy!