What Is Faster: Parsing a java.util.Properties Or Invoking Class#getAnnotation()? 📎
I'm building an EJB 3.1 capable ServiceLocator, which works with the global JNDI names (portable and standardized version JNDI-names needed to lookup a local, remote, or even no-interface-view interface) . The implementation relies on parsing java.util.Properties to fetch the current EAR and EJB-JAR (module) names - both cannot be derived via reflection. I was concerned about the performance of parsing and accessing the properties from a file and fired up the Netbeans 6.5 profiler.
I wasn't even able to find the java.util.Properties in the hotspot list at all. ...the reason was - it is lightening fast (took only about 4.5 ms...).
The ServiceLocator 2.0 :-) accesses the annotations as well - which turned out to be the real hot spot. The first access to the annotation takes 55 ms. It is the method Class#initAnnotationsIfNecessary (indirectly invoked by Class#getAnnotation), which takes so long. It uses Sun's internal class sun.reflect.annotation.AnnotationParser, which in turn creates a dynamic proxy. The creation of the dynamic proxy (Proxy#newProxyInstance) takes 44 ms.
The exact performance was:
55 ms Class.getAnnotation
4.43 ms Creating, loading and parsing java.util.Properties (two String entries)