[andor]

The Java Hotspot VM can still optimize for this case, if the virtual call leads to only a few classes most of the time. Several virtual methods can be inlined, but of course there's still an extra step compared to static dispatch: the classes of the current object and the inlined methods have to be compared. If no matching method is inlined, control needs to be passed back to the VM.

[pmjordan]

A fascinating article on this type of optimisation:

http://www.azulsystems.com/blog/cliff/2010-04-08-inline-cach...

[MrBuddyCasino]

Interesting read, I didn't know that making fields final in Java does nothing for performance. Any idea what those "Generic Popular Frameworks" are? I put my money on Hibernate.