I have always thought that profilers are just debuggers with a different name. Case in point: in a debugger I can watch the logic of my program change things like the value of a variable. Similarly, one of the things I can watch in a profiler is how my program uses memory. For example, I can see the number of instances of a particular class that have been created. In general, then, these are similar tools: they let you watch what happens at runtime.

So it is not surprising to me to see features from debuggers show up in profilers. In Milestone 1 of the 6.0 version of the NetBeans Profiler, there is a new feature called Profiling Points. The idea is pretty simple: provide a user interface similar to setting a breakpoint in a debugger. Only instead of stopping the execution of your program, a profiling point causes the profiler to do something on your behalf. There are several different "somethings" in Milestone 1: start/stop a simple timer, define root methods, clear the profiler's buffer of accumulated results, and save a snapshot of accumulated results.

It is important to note that this feature is not yet finished - we are making it available in order to get feedback on it. You can download Milestone 1 of the NetBeans Profiler from this page. To learn more about Profiling Points you can look at the documentation page or watch the Flash demo that I created.