A system and associated method for tracing state information of a target object. The target object is a data item of an application object executed in a virtual machine. Upon detecting a triggering event pertaining to the target object while executing the application object, the virtual machine stores the state information of the target object in a target state info object in a heap space such that the state information is maintained across instances of the virtual machine. The target object is associated with the target state info object by using a weak hash map entry such that the target state info object is garbage collected when the target object is garbage collected and such that the state information is not excessively accumulated. A system dump containing the target object and the target state info object is produced when the application object fails.