Dalvik Debug Monitor Service

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What Does Dalvik Debug Monitor Service Mean?

The Dalvik Debug Monitor Service (DDMS) is a debugging tool used in the Android platform. The Dalvik Debug Monitor Service is downloaded as part of the Android SDK. Some of the services provided by the DDMS are port forwarding, on-device screen capture, on-device thread and heap monitoring, and radio state information.

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Techopedia Explains Dalvik Debug Monitor Service

The Dalvik Debug Monitor Service allows developers to spot bugs in applications running on either an emulator or an actual Android device.

For example, by using the DDMS’ LogCat feature, developers can view log messages regarding the state of the application and the device. LogCat can pinpoint the exact line number on which an error occurred.

Another DDMS feature, known as the Emulator Control, allows developers to simulate phone states and activities. For example, it can simulate different types of networks such as GPRS, EDGE, and UTMS, which can have different network characteristics such as speed and latency.

Aside from the features mentioned earlier, the Dalvik Debug Monitor Service also provides LogCat, process, and radio state information as well as incoming call, SMS, and location data spoofing.

This debugging tool can be integrated into the Eclipse IDE by adding the ADT (Android Development Tools) plug-in. Otherwise, it can be accessed from the command line and will automatically connect to any running emulator.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist
Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.