JAX -- the Java Application
eXtractor
| JAX (short for Jikes Application
eXtractor) is a tool for reducing the size of Java applets and
applications. JAX reads in the class files that constitute a Java
application and determines unnecessary classes, methods, and fields that
can be removed from the application without affecting its behavior. JAX
then performs a number of compression and optimization techniques to further
reduce application size, and to improve performance. After performing the
transformations, JAX produces a ZIP file containing the compressed application.
We have successfully applied JAX to real-life Java applications of up to
2300 classes, and we have measured size reductions of up to 90%,
where the larger size reductions generally occur for large, library-based
applications. The average size reduction we observed is about 50%. JAX
is written in Java, and has been tested using JDK 1.1.x, and JDK 1.2, IBM
Visual Age Java, Linux, and a number of other platforms.
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