Yesterday I gave a presentation at the Transylvania JUG about using profilers and different techniques which you can use to work around the discovered performance problems. Below you can find the embedded presentation.
**http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=java-perf-201003-100326052203-phpapp02&rel=0&stripped\_title=performance-optimization-techniques-for-java-code**