OutofMemory Error while sending file to database using Web services

Question

I have a file of 30MB to be written to the MySQL database. I am doing this in Axis web services and it gives me the following error:
(I am using Tomcat as the application server and Apache as the web server, Axis 1.3 and MySQL standard 5.0.21 version. I have set the minimum and maximum heap size and it works well without using the web service (just uploading and downloading from the database using a simple java program). Another thing to notice is that I can send a file of almost 10MB size to the database using web service without any problem. But it doesn't work with the 30 MB .)
java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space; nested exception is:
     java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
AxisFault
faultCode: {http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/}Server.generalException
faultSubcode:
faultString: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space; nested exception is:
     java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
faultActor:
faultNode:
faultDetail:
     {http://xml.apache.org/axis/}hostname:dbr221d.dbr.louisville.edu
java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space; nested exception is:
     java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
     at org.apache.axis.message.SOAPFaultBuilder.createFault(SOAPFaultBuilder.java:222)
     at org.apache.axis.message.SOAPFaultBuilder.endElement(SOAPFaultBuilder.java:129)
     at org.apache.axis.encoding.DeserializationContext.endElement(DeserializationContext.java:1087)
     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.endElement(AbstractSAXParser.java:633)
     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLNSDocumentScannerImpl.scanEndElement(XMLNSDocumentScannerImpl.java:719)
     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl$FragmentContentDispatcher.dispatch(XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.java:1685)
     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanDocument(XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.java:368)
     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(XML11Configuration.java:834)
     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(XML11Configuration.java:764)
     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XMLParser.parse(XMLParser.java:148)
     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.parse(AbstractSAXParser.java:1242)
     at javax.xml.parsers.SAXParser.parse(SAXParser.java:375)
     at org.apache.axis.encoding.DeserializationContext.parse(DeserializationContext.java:227)
     at org.apache.axis.SOAPPart.getAsSOAPEnvelope(SOAPPart.java:696)
     at org.apache.axis.Message.getSOAPEnvelope(Message.java:435)
     at org.apache.axis.handlers.soap.MustUnderstandChecker.invoke(MustUnderstandChecker.java:62)
     at org.apache.axis.client.AxisClient.invoke(AxisClient.java:206)
     at org.apache.axis.client.Call.invokeEngine(Call.java:2784)
     at org.apache.axis.client.Call.invoke(Call.java:2767)
     at org.apache.axis.client.Call.invoke(Call.java:2443)
     at org.apache.axis.client.Call.invoke(Call.java:2366)
     at org.apache.axis.client.Call.invoke(Call.java:1812)
     at edu.louisville.bcc_ma.ws.lab.LabServiceSoapBindingStub.storeGZIPFile(LabServiceSoapBindingStub.java:472)
     at edu.louisville.bcc_ma.lims.labclient.container.SendGZIPFile.sendFile(SendGZIPFile.java:69)
     at edu.louisville.bcc_ma.lims.labclient.container.LoginContainer.login(LoginContainer.java:58)
     at edu.louisville.bcc_ma.lims.labclient.container.LoginContainer.main(LoginContainer.java:44)

Answer 1

Sorry for the delayed response here, forget to add it to my watchlist. I didn't catch if you were using Java 1.5 or not. Prior to 1.5 the default maximum heap space was 64MB which with the overhead of the appserver might be your problem.
Take a look at http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/vm/gc-ergonomics.html and the java -Xmx <size> command line option to change the default (I believe the size argument is in bytes, but don't hold me to that). I think you can pass that as a command line option to the startup script, but you should check the doco to see if it needs to be wrapped in some other arg etc.,
I seem to recall running into this same problem a few years back when I had a servlet doing some intense graphics processing on the fly and setting this option fixed the problem.