简单来说，堆栈跟踪是应用程序在引发Exception时处于中间的方法调用的列表。

简单的例子

通过问题中给出的示例，我们可以准确确定在应用程序中引发异常的位置。让我们看一下堆栈跟踪：

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
        at com.example.myproject.Book.getTitle(Book.java:16)
        at com.example.myproject.Author.getBookTitles(Author.java:25)
        at com.example.myproject.Bootstrap.main(Bootstrap.java:14)

这是一个非常简单的堆栈跟踪。如果我们从at ...列表的开头开始，我们可以判断出错误发生在哪里。我们正在寻找的是应用程序中最顶层的方法调用。在这种情况下，它是：

at com.example.myproject.Book.getTitle(Book.java:16)

为了调试它，我们可以打开Book.java并查看line 16，它是：

15   public String getTitle() {
16      System.out.println(title.toString());
17      return title;
18   }

这将表明上面的代码中有（可能是title）某些内容null。

带有一系列异常的示例

有时，应用程序会捕获异常并将其重新引发为另一个异常的原因。通常看起来像：

34   public void getBookIds(int id) {
35      try {
36         book.getId(id);    // this method it throws a NullPointerException on line 22
37      } catch (NullPointerException e) {
38         throw new IllegalStateException("A book has a null property", e)
39      }
40   }

这可能会给你一个堆栈跟踪，如下所示：

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalStateException: A book has a null property
        at com.example.myproject.Author.getBookIds(Author.java:38)
        at com.example.myproject.Bootstrap.main(Bootstrap.java:14)
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
        at com.example.myproject.Book.getId(Book.java:22)
        at com.example.myproject.Author.getBookIds(Author.java:36)
        ... 1 more

与此不同的是Caused by。有时，例外会有多个Caused by部分。对于这些，你通常希望找到“根本原因”，这将是堆栈跟踪中最低的“Cause by”部分之一。在我们的例子中是：

Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException <-- root cause
        at com.example.myproject.Book.getId(Book.java:22) <-- important line

同样，对于此例外，我们会想看看行22的Book.java，看看有什么可能导致NullPointerException这里。

库代码更令人生畏的示例

通常，堆栈跟踪要比上面的两个示例复杂得多。这是一个示例（虽然很长，但是展示了多个级别的链接异常）：

javax.servlet.ServletException: Something bad happened
    at com.example.myproject.OpenSessionInViewFilter.doFilter(OpenSessionInViewFilter.java:60)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler$CachedChain.doFilter(ServletHandler.java:1157)
    at com.example.myproject.ExceptionHandlerFilter.doFilter(ExceptionHandlerFilter.java:28)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler$CachedChain.doFilter(ServletHandler.java:1157)
    at com.example.myproject.OutputBufferFilter.doFilter(OutputBufferFilter.java:33)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler$CachedChain.doFilter(ServletHandler.java:1157)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler.handle(ServletHandler.java:388)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.security.SecurityHandler.handle(SecurityHandler.java:216)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.SessionHandler.handle(SessionHandler.java:182)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.ContextHandler.handle(ContextHandler.java:765)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext.handle(WebAppContext.java:418)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.HandlerWrapper.handle(HandlerWrapper.java:152)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.Server.handle(Server.java:326)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpConnection.handleRequest(HttpConnection.java:542)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpConnection$RequestHandler.content(HttpConnection.java:943)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpParser.parseNext(HttpParser.java:756)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpParser.parseAvailable(HttpParser.java:218)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpConnection.handle(HttpConnection.java:404)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.bio.SocketConnector$Connection.run(SocketConnector.java:228)
    at org.mortbay.thread.QueuedThreadPool$PoolThread.run(QueuedThreadPool.java:582)
Caused by: com.example.myproject.MyProjectServletException
    at com.example.myproject.MyServlet.doPost(MyServlet.java:169)
    at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:727)
    at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:820)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHolder.handle(ServletHolder.java:511)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler$CachedChain.doFilter(ServletHandler.java:1166)
    at com.example.myproject.OpenSessionInViewFilter.doFilter(OpenSessionInViewFilter.java:30)
    ... 27 more
Caused by: org.hibernate.exception.ConstraintViolationException: could not insert: [com.example.myproject.MyEntity]
    at org.hibernate.exception.SQLStateConverter.convert(SQLStateConverter.java:96)
    at org.hibernate.exception.JDBCExceptionHelper.convert(JDBCExceptionHelper.java:66)
    at org.hibernate.id.insert.AbstractSelectingDelegate.performInsert(AbstractSelectingDelegate.java:64)
    at org.hibernate.persister.entity.AbstractEntityPersister.insert(AbstractEntityPersister.java:2329)
    at org.hibernate.persister.entity.AbstractEntityPersister.insert(AbstractEntityPersister.java:2822)
    at org.hibernate.action.EntityIdentityInsertAction.execute(EntityIdentityInsertAction.java:71)
    at org.hibernate.engine.ActionQueue.execute(ActionQueue.java:268)
    at org.hibernate.event.def.AbstractSaveEventListener.performSaveOrReplicate(AbstractSaveEventListener.java:321)
    at org.hibernate.event.def.AbstractSaveEventListener.performSave(AbstractSaveEventListener.java:204)
    at org.hibernate.event.def.AbstractSaveEventListener.saveWithGeneratedId(AbstractSaveEventListener.java:130)
    at org.hibernate.event.def.DefaultSaveOrUpdateEventListener.saveWithGeneratedOrRequestedId(DefaultSaveOrUpdateEventListener.java:210)
    at org.hibernate.event.def.DefaultSaveEventListener.saveWithGeneratedOrRequestedId(DefaultSaveEventListener.java:56)
    at org.hibernate.event.def.DefaultSaveOrUpdateEventListener.entityIsTransient(DefaultSaveOrUpdateEventListener.java:195)
    at org.hibernate.event.def.DefaultSaveEventListener.performSaveOrUpdate(DefaultSaveEventListener.java:50)
    at org.hibernate.event.def.DefaultSaveOrUpdateEventListener.onSaveOrUpdate(DefaultSaveOrUpdateEventListener.java:93)
    at org.hibernate.impl.SessionImpl.fireSave(SessionImpl.java:705)
    at org.hibernate.impl.SessionImpl.save(SessionImpl.java:693)
    at org.hibernate.impl.SessionImpl.save(SessionImpl.java:689)
    at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor5.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
    at org.hibernate.context.ThreadLocalSessionContext$TransactionProtectionWrapper.invoke(ThreadLocalSessionContext.java:344)
    at $Proxy19.save(Unknown Source)
    at com.example.myproject.MyEntityService.save(MyEntityService.java:59) <-- relevant call (see notes below)
    at com.example.myproject.MyServlet.doPost(MyServlet.java:164)
    ... 32 more
Caused by: java.sql.SQLException: Violation of unique constraint MY_ENTITY_UK_1: duplicate value(s) for column(s) MY_COLUMN in statement [...]
    at org.hsqldb.jdbc.Util.throwError(Unknown Source)
    at org.hsqldb.jdbc.jdbcPreparedStatement.executeUpdate(Unknown Source)
    at com.mchange.v2.c3p0.impl.NewProxyPreparedStatement.executeUpdate(NewProxyPreparedStatement.java:105)
    at org.hibernate.id.insert.AbstractSelectingDelegate.performInsert(AbstractSelectingDelegate.java:57)
    ... 54 more

在这个例子中，还有更多。我们最关心的是从代码中寻找方法，这些方法可能是com.example.myproject程序包中的任何方法。在上面的第二个示例中，我们首先要查找根本原因，即：

Caused by: java.sql.SQLException

但是，该方法下的所有方法调用都是库代码。因此，我们将移至其上方的“ Caused by”，并寻找源于我们代码的第一个方法调用，即：

at com.example.myproject.MyEntityService.save(MyEntityService.java:59)

就像在前面的例子中，我们应该看看MyEntityService.java就行59，因为这是此错误的起源（这个有点明显出了什么问题，因为SQLException中发生的错误，但调试程序是什么，我们以后是）。