Slimtune

[Oliverio Gallman]

Ofcourse, one way to avoid the pain of testing, profiling and refactoring your code repeatedly is to write more efficient code in the first place. Here are three articles that discuss best practices for writing apps that will, hopefully, need a few less runs through the profiler to achieve the speed you hoped for:

JetBrains dotTrace (jetbrains.com/profiler) is actually a collection of two lightweight .NET profiling apps: dotTrace4 4 Performance and dotTrace 3.5 Memory. dotTrace lets you target apps using the .NET Framework 1.0 through 4, .NET Compact Framework 3.5 and Silverlight 4. You can run tracing, sampling or line-by-line analysis on both local and remote systems. dotTrace integrates with Visual Studio 2005 through 2010. JetBrains currently offers a time-limited free trial and a number of licensing options. See the site for details.

Red Gate ANTS Performance Profiler (bit.ly/g1yVEt) and ANTS Memory Profiler (bit.ly/h3JzAX) are another set of commercial profiling tools that analyze Windows Forms apps, ASP.NET Web apps, SharePoint and Silverlight 4. With the .NET Framework 4, ANTS Performance Profiler supports CLR profiling so you can attach to running processes. You can also get performance data for SQL queries triggered from your code. Both products support the .NET Framework 1.0 through 4 and Windows XP through Windows 7, and can be run directly from Visual Studio. See the Red Gate site for pricing.

SmartBear AQtime Pro (bit.ly/ePmENJ) is a performance profiling and memory and resource debugging program for targeting the .NET Framework, Java, JScript and VBScript code. You can use AQtime Pro to profile both 32- and 64-bit applications, and the profiler can be directly integrated into Visual Studio 2002 through 2010 and Embarcadero RAD Studio development environments. AQtime Pro also provides a programmable debugger using a COM-based architecture so you can create custom profilers. Download a time-limited free trial, or contact Smart Bear for current pricing.

SlimTune (code.google.com/p/slimtune) is a free, open source profiling and performance-analysis tool for .NET development. Development is currently in beta, and though you can target both x86 and x64 applications, only sample-based profiling is available. Source code is available if you want to hack in it yourself.

Electric Software GlowCode (glowcode.com) is another commercial performance and memory profiler targeted at 32- and 64-bit managed, native and mixed code written in C, C++ or any .NET Framework-compliant language. GlowCode integrates directly with Visual Studio 2010 so you can profile your app without leaving the IDE. A time-limited evaluation license is available along with single-user and floating licenses. Check the Web site for details.

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