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I am writing this blog entry to remind people that data collection should occur in all phases of an application's life cycle in production. This includes collecting data like javacores and heapdumps in production when the application is running in a nominal, steady state condition. This provides valuable data for when problems do occur to be able to compare the data when negative behaviour is occurring to when things were not bad. The data also helps to feed trend analysis in conjunction with application monitoring tools in terms of understanding what users are doing under both conditions.
Collect data often and be prepared for that day when all of the sudden the production environment is exhibiting distress.
