What's New in dotTrace 5.0 Performance
The latest version of dotTrace Performance improves remote profiling, enables attaching to and detaching from running processes, integrates decompiling technology, and supports IIS Express.
Read more below or watch this screencast to learn what's new.
Improved remote profiling
You have been able to profile .NET applications on remote machines for a while using dotTrace Performance. With version 5, remote profiling experience is substantially improved.
To start off, HTTP is now used for remote profiling instead of a custom protocol, which allows profiling over VPNs and simplifies configuring firewall rules. Also, both IPv4 and IPv6 are now supported for remote profiling.
We have also removed passphrase exchange between dotTrace and its remote agent, making remote profiling easier in restricted environments. In addition, dotTrace profiling agent can now be run either as a regular service or an ASP.NET Web Service.
Last but not least, you can finally attach to running remote processes, which is crucial in discovering bottlenecks in mission-critical production .NET applications.
Support for IIS Express
As IIS Express was gaining popularity among web developers, we've been receiving requests to enable profiling web applications running under this server, and here we go: dotTrace 5 Performance introduces official support for IIS Express that complements existing support for the full-fledged IIS and ASP.NET Development Server.
Improvements in Plain List View
We've put a lot of effort to make Plain List a better place to examine application behavior. You can now choose to show or hide system functions from the Plain List View, and group functions by assembly in addition to class and namespace groupings.
As a bonus, Plain List is now constructed a lot faster with large snapshots, displaying up to 20x performance improvement in certain scenarios.
Attaching to running processes
Arguably the greatest new feature in dotTrace 5 Performance is the ability to attach the profiler to an existing .NET Framework 4.0+ process and run sampling performance analysis on it.
Oftentimes, an application that you want to optimize takes long hours or even days before it starts to display any performance issues. Previously, you would have to run it under profiling from the very start, which added another layer of performance overhead. Now, this is no longer required: with the ability to attach to a running process, you only involve the profiler when you really need it.
Integrated decompiler
Following ReSharper and dotPeek, JetBrains .NET assembly decompiling technology has arrived in dotTrace. While profiling an application, if you need to dig further into the code but you don't have source code or symbol information at hand, dotTrace 5 Performance will decompile it for you instantly and present decompiled code in its source preview area for quick review.
Easier estimation of performance gains
The Adjust Time functionality that is used to estimate how optimizing a certain function affects timings of the entire snapshot has been improved as well.
Specifically, you can now clear all time adjustments on all functions visible in the current view in one step — previously you would have to navigate between adjusted functions and set them back to their actual timings one by one. We have also enabled management of time adjustments in the Overview view.
Enhancements and additions for supported frameworks
dotTrace 5 Performance ensures seamless profiling of applications that contain code targeting different CLR versions. For example, if you have a .NET Framework 4.0 application that is dependent on external libraries targeting CLR 2, this application can now be perfectly profiled.
dotTrace 5.0 Performance is a free upgrade from dotTrace 4.x Performance purchased on or after February 23, 2012.
dotTrace 4.5 Performance
June, 2011
- Integration with ReSharper 6
- Previewing .NET Framework source code
- Displaying IL code in source view
- Less noise in call stacks and improved tree presentation
- Extracting all public methods of a class to a single tab
- Improved estimation of potential performance gains
- New floating license handling policy
- Performance improvements
- Welcome Page cosmetic improvements
dotTrace 4.0 Performance
September, 2010
- Line-by-line profiling
- Remote profiling
- Instant estimation of potential performance gains
- Support for .NET Framework 4.0
- Support for Silverlight 4
- Support for .NET Compact Framework 3.5
- Two editions
- Annotating snapshots