Early classes of the Java API, such as Vector, Hashtable and StringBuffer, were synchronized to make them thread-safe. Unfortunately, synchronization has a big negative impact on performance, even when using these collections from a single thread.

It is better to use their new unsynchronized replacements:

Noncompliant Code Example

Vector cats = new Vector();

Compliant Solution

ArrayList cats = new ArrayList();

Exceptions

Use of those synchronized classes is ignored in the signatures of overriding methods.

@Override
public Vector getCats() {...}