IBM developerWorks has posted a new tutorial on  Eclipse Test and Performance Tools Platform (TPTP): Monitor Applications. Martin Streicher, Editor-in-Chief of Linux Magazine will explain how to use the capabilities of the Eclipse Test and Performance Tools Platform (TPTP) to convert application log files into a structured format. Then, using TPTP and other specialized tools designed to process and analyze log files, one can discern usage patterns, performance profiles, and errors.

As a prerequisite for the tutorial, one must have experience with software development and the entire software development life cycle, including testing and profiling. Experience in installing software from the command line, and setting and managing shell and system environment variables, such as the shell's PATH variable and the Java CLASSPATH is needed.

Additionally, it is vital to have some experience reading and writing regular expressions. Acquaintance with Eclipse and the Eclipse user interface (UI) paradigms is also beneficial.
At least 300 MB of free disk space on your system is required. Enough free physical memory to run the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is also needed. In general, 64 MB or more of free physical memory is recommended.

The system requirements for taking this tutorial are:

• Download Java technology from Sun Microsystems or from IBM
• Eclipse V3.1 Software Development Kit (SDK)
• Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) SDK V2.1
• XML Schema Infoset Model (XSD) SDK V2.1
• Version 1.1.1 of Eclipse Unified Modeling Language (UML) 2
• The Eclipse TPTP runtime
• GLA runtime