How to measure performance in Java developement

Use profiling tools, such as YourKit, JProfiler and HPROF (this one is a command line tool).

You are looking for a profiler. I know that NetBeans includes a decent one.

You can also look at this question: Open Source Java Profilers.

It seems that the JDK 1.6 comes with a basic profiler. So maybe you want to give it a try first.It should be included with the VisualVM that comes with your jdk6: visualvm profiler