InformationWeek

October 20, 1997

Find VB Bottlenecks

Tool profiles critical modules

ational Software Corp. announced last week the company's first code-profiling tool for Visual Basic. Visual Quantify for Visual Basic 5.0 is an automated performance testing and reporting tool that helps programmers find bottlenecks in Visual Basic applications.

To use the tool, developers select a precompiled VB application and let the profiler automatically examine, or "instrument," the native executable code.

Instrumentation inserts a probe into the native binaries, which lets Visual Quantify monitor application statement, component, and operating system call-entry and -exit points. The instrumented application can then be run either manually or by using regression test scripts. Visual Quantify then generates what Rational officials refer to as a call graph, which displays the critical path taken through the source code as it executes, and reports timing statistics and unused code.

"The call graph lets developers focus only on those components that are seeing the most activity," says Pamela Roussos, VP of developer products at Rational. "This means they can save time by concentrating their tuning efforts on the modules that matter most."

Rational's offering hits the market just weeks after competitor TracePoint Technology Inc. shipped HiProf for VB, a code-profiling tool that uses similar technology. Before these automated code profilers were available, developers were forced to instrument source code manually, a time-intensive and tedious process.

Rational's initial release of Visual Quantify will support only VB applications running on Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. VB developers running Microsoft Wi ndows 95 will have to wait for a possible upgrade, or they can turn to TracePoint's competitive offering, which supports both Windows 95 and NT. Visual Quantify will be available in November, with single-seat pricing starting at $550.

Back to News in Review