Class-wise profiling of Java memory consumption

Question

I have a Java project that initializes thousands of objects in a tree-like hierarchy.

Initially, I was programming with performance in mind and thus didn't mind storing a lot of computable properties in class fields(variables)..
However, recently, I started trying to estimate the memory footprint of my project and found it to be very large.

I'm trying to identify which class consumes the most memory
I guess I can then narrow it down to which field is consuming the most (probably Strings)

I have come across Java's instrumentation package and getObjectSize

I tried understanding their documentation, but I'm not sure if instrumentation is suited for my task.
I have also noticed that getObjectSize does not recursively find sizes.

I was thinking of creating a class that extends Object and contains a static map of instance -> instanceSize, and then making all my classes extend this class and also updating their constructors

Is my approach correct?
What would be the most 'Java' way of accomplishing this?

Answer 1

Um, put down the coding tools and pick up a memory profiler. there are great free ones out there.