Monitoring Windows Tomcat Service with Java VisualVM(and how I finally failed)

Local Java Applications that are running as a Windows Service can not be monitored with Java VisualVM without some extra efforts. I recently tried to monitor a Tomcat service but I could not find it after starting Java VisualVM. I wondered what was wrong and found the best answer in an old Netbeans Profiler Blog post: "Monitoring Java Processes Running As a Windows Service". The reason why I did not see the Tomcat Service in the application tree was:

Windows command line aliases

As a former part time Ubuntu user I used a lot of alias definitions for often used shell commands. I missed the alias utility on windows but found that the windows doskey utility is a fair enough alternative for me.

I most often use doskey in the form

doskey <MacroName>=[<Text>]

"Creates a macro that carries out the commands specified by Text. MacroName specifies the name you want to assign to the macro. Text specifies the commands you want to record." (from Windows doskey reference as linked above)

The [<Text>] parameter supports some useful special characters like

$T     separates commands
$1-$9  batch parameter placeholder

I put all my doskey definitions in a batch file (myCmd.bat) which I use to start a new command line window.

This works pretty well for me - and maybe also for you. You will find a myCmd.bat example shown below.

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