While an ounce of prevention may indeed be worth a pound of cure, if not more, careful design and good "performance thinking" before writing code still doesn't exempt developers from subsequent code analysis and optimization each time a new version starts to gel. It's time to debug and optimize when the code's more or less complete and the release window is in sight.
While Visual Studio.NET includes some tools for code profiling and analysis, third-party tools often shed light where Microsoft may fear (or simply have forgotten) to tread. Once such tool not only helps to identify and repair memory leaks in code, it also helps identify and widen performance bottlenecks as well. It's called AQtime 4, from well-known testing and debugging tool vendor AutomatedQA, and it combines the capabilities of the company's AQtime, which is geared toward profiling Win32 applications, and its AQtime for .NET, the company's performance and memory allocation profiler for .NET code. Simply put, AQTime 4 helps developers isolate, identify, and remove performance issues or memory/resource leaks within .NET code or Win32 applications.
AQtime's biggest strength is its ability to monitor and report on code performance and testing, including "coverage proofing" (checking which lines of code are actually exercised by test suites and reporting on overlooked elements), performance comparisons of "before" and "after" versions when trying to improve performance or stop leaks, and precise identification of the lines of code most involved in creating performance problems or resource/memory leaks. The company thinks highly enough of this product that it offers a 60-day unconditional money-back guarantee on both the $600 named user license or the $1,900 concurrent user license.
In addition to working with (and integrating very nicely within) Visual Studio .NET 2002, 2003, and 2005, and code from any .NET compiler, AQTime 4 also works with Borland Developer Studio 2006, C#Builder, Delphi, C++Builder, as well as Intel C++ and Compaq Visual Fortran 6.5. AQTime 4 includes even includes an integrated source code editor you can use to browse project source code from within AQtime when using it standalone. And of course, AQTime also works with AutomatedQA's well-known TestComplete test automation system as well.
Visit the AQTime 4 Web page to find detailed listings of features and benefits, system requirements, and a detailed hands-on overview in either PDF or Word format.
Ed Tittel is a writer and trainer whose interests include XML and development topics, along with IT Certification and information security. E-mail etittel@techtarget.com with comments, questions, or suggested topics or tools to review. Cool tools rule!
