What's New in dotTrace 4.5 Performance
dotTrace 4.5 Performance brings quite a lot of improvements compared to version 4.0.
Read below or watch this screencast to learn what's new.
Integration with ReSharper 6
The latest minor update, dotTrace 4.5.2 Performance, enables profiling of unit tests by integrating with a variety of recent versions of ReSharper, including 6.1, 6.0, and the 5.x family.
Less noise in call stacks and improved tree presentation
Content in snapshot views is now better organized: specifically, icons to the left of the tree no longer misalign its nodes. In addition, you can now quickly fold or unfold calls that take insignificant time with Ctrl+Space:
Extracting all public methods of a class to a single tab
You can now quickly view all public method calls from a certain class in a separate tab, which helps analyze the performance of a class along the lines of its API:
Improved estimation of potential performance gains
You can now adjust time of a function called from a specific parent function, leaving its other calls intact:
Sampling profiling is now used by default
Sampling is the fastest profiling mode that imposes least overhead. Of course, whenever you need to collect more detailed performance data, you can switch to tracing or line-by-line profiling.
Previewing .NET Framework source code
By connecting dotTrace 4.5 Performance to Microsoft Reference Source Server (via View | Options | Source Preview), you can preview the source code of .NET Framework when you analyze the behaviour of library code in your snapshot.
Displaying IL code in source view
In the Source Preview area, you can now switch between source form and IL form of methods that you're analyzing:
New floating license handling policy
This is an important change for customers who are using dotTrace integrated into Visual Studio in corporate environments. Before, a floating license ticket was issued right upon loading the dotTrace plug-in in Visual Studio irrelevant of whether a user actually needed it. Starting from dotTrace 4.5 Performance, a ticket is only requested after a user has performed an operation with dotTrace from within Visual Studio.
Performance improvements
dotTrace 4.5 Performance generates Hot Spots and Plain List views a lot faster than version 4.0. Acceleration has also been applied to search in Hot Spots view and canceling view construction on pressing Esc.
Welcome Page cosmetic improvements
dotTrace 4.5 Performance Welcome page can now differentiate between applications with similar names, and the Recent Snapshots area highlights snapshots that have been deleted, renamed and moved:
dotTrace 4.5 Performance is a free upgrade from dotTrace 4.0.x Performance or dotTrace 3.x purchased after December 17, 2008.
What's New in dotTrace 4.0 Performance
New performance profiling features and enhancements include support for CLR 4, Windows Mobile, and Silverlight 4; as well as two new profiling modes: line-by-line and remote profiling.
New Profiling Modes
Line-by-line profiling adds to two existing profiling modes in dotTrace Performance: tracing profiling and wall-time profiling.
In this mode dotTrace collects timing information for every statement in methods with available source code. This lets you collect the most detailed info about methods that perform significant algorithmic work. You can specify exactly which methods you want to be profiled or profile all methods for which dotTrace is able to locate symbol information.
Remote profiling: dotTrace 4 Performance Professional Edition can connect to a remote machine to profile a standalone or web application, or a Windows service. You don't have to install dotTrace on the remote machine — the setup is performed by an automatic utility.
Support for New Technologies
dotTrace 4 Performance profiles CLR 4 applications and integrates with Visual Studio 2010. Of course, integration with Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 is there as well.
dotTrace 4 Performance profiles the performance of Silverlight 4 applications. Note that dotTrace 4 Performance does not profile applications that use earlier Silverlight versions.
dotTrace 4 Performance lets you profile Windows Mobile applications built with .NET Compact Framework 3.5. All features except line-by-line profiling are supported.
Two Editions
dotTrace 4 Performance introduces a new editioning scheme. Specifically, it comes in two editions: Standard and Professional.
Simply put, Standard Edition provides all the functionality that is available in Professional Edition, excluding support for .NET Compact Framework 3.5, Silverlight 4, and remote profiling.
Instant Estimation
Sometimes during profiling sessions you notice that your application is running slow or hanging, only to realize that you have failed to turn off a debug switch. After that, you have to reprofile everything.
Other times, after hours of continuous profiling, you optimize a time-consuming method, and again, you have to start from scratch to see if the optimization actually works.
For scenarios like these, we've designed dotTrace 4 Performance to be able to recalculate a snapshot instantly — without reprofiling your application. It's like asking the
profiler: "what if I optimize this function by 40%?". Just call
Robustness
Server-scale snapshot support: dotTrace 4 Performance is able to profile huge applications and get snapshots of up to several hundred gigabytes in size while still working at acceptable speed. This enables use of dotTrace for profiling complex desktop and server applications.
Speed and accuracy: The new dotTrace is faster and more accurate than ever. Both modes: tracing and sampling have become faster. We have also added 'high accuracy' flag to account for the time spent inside the profiler. When every millisecond counts, dotTrace pays attention.
Annotating Snapshots
Textual annotations can now be created for individual functions. These annotations are saved with the snapshot and can be reviewed and edited later.