Patent ID: 8504878

Claim:
A method for analyzing heap data, the method comprising: obtaining the heap data from a memory, the heap data representing a plurality of objects of one or more classes, each object identifying a referrer instance, a field in the referrer, and a referent instance; performing a statistical analysis on the plurality of heap data to identify references to objects within the heap that are contributing to a growth of the heap, wherein performing the statistical analysis on the heap data comprises grouping the plurality of references into a plurality of subgroups based on the identified referrer instance, field in the referrer, and referent instance of each object, determining a size of each subset, determining a size of each subset relative to a total heap size, identifying at least one subset of references contributing to the growth of the heap based on the size of each subset relative to the total heap size, and calculating a correlation coefficient for each subset based on the size of each subset relative to the total heap size; and traversing the heap based on the referrer instance of one or more objects identified as contributing to the growth of the heap to a root object identified as not contributing to the growth of the heap.