JetBrains’ dotTrace 1.

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Reviewer’s Guide
 JetBrains’ dotTrace 1.1 Reviewer’s Guide

Reviewer Welcome
On behalf of JetBrains and the entire dotTrace development team, we want to
personally thank you for reviewing this latest addition to our .NET product line,
dotTrace, our fast and easy to use profiler for the .NET platform.
dotTrace is a stand-alone application that profiles .NET 1.x and 2.0 applications,
including ASP.NET applications running on Internet Information Server 5.0 and
above.
dotTrace brings to the table:
Fastest in-class performance profiling tool in the market
Powerful filtering, searching, and navigation capabilities
Instant availability of all features from the keyboard (no switching between
keyboard and mouse)
Different views to examine applications from different points
Command line support that lets you easily integrate dotTrace into your daily
build process
dotTrace API which lets you control and utilize dotTrace’s powerful features
from your own applications
We do recommend you view the dotTrace Flash demo available at
http://www.jetbrains.com/profiler/dotTrace_demo.html
for a general overview of its usage and operation.

System Requirements
Before installing dotTrace make sure that the following requirements are met:
A processor with IA32 or X64 architecture
Microsoft Windows 2000, XP or 2003 Server
Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 or 2.0
Internet Explorer 6
512 megabytes of RAM or more is recommended
40 megabytes of hard drive space

Installing dotTrace
You’ll find the installer at http://www.jetbrains.com/profiler/download/index.html.
Start the Installation Wizard and follow the steps suggested by the wizard.

Getting Started
Using dotTrace is straightforward and easy. A typical profiling session consists
of the following:

Reviewer Welcome 1
 JetBrains’ dotTrace 1.1 Reviewer’s Guide

1. Choose the application to be profiled and launch it from dotTrace (i.e. in the
Welcome screen, click Profile Application)
2. Let your application run and/or perform specific actions in it
3. Tell dotTrace when to fetch captured data from the process (i.e. in the profiling
control window, click Get Snapshot)
4. Review and analyze the report
5. Save the report (Ctrl+S) or export it to a file (View > Export Current File)

Feature Review List

Data Viewing
dotTrace provides you with a number of informative views (Call Tree, Plain View,
Hot Spots and more) for inspection of your captured profiling data, or snapshots.
You can switch between the available views using the links in the Views group
(top lefthand corner of the report).
The importance of each function call is represented with descriptive icons, along
with precise execution times and other relevant information.

Quickly find performance bottle-necks

You can "zoom in" on a specific function to have a closer look at it and the
functions it called. Click the function you want to investigate and press Ctrl + T
or right-click the function and select Open in New Tab from the shortcut menu.
A new tab will show the same things as the basic CPU Statistics tab, except
that the chosen function will be at the root.

Feature Review List 2

 JetBrains’ dotTrace 1.1 Reviewer’s Guide

Filtering
dotTrace’s predefined and customizable filters allow you to focus your attention
on the functions most important to you. To open the filters console, click the
View > Manage filters menu or just press Ctrl + Alt + F.

Filter Console

There are two types of filters available (both are created in the Filters dialog
box):
Hide filters let you specify a class or classes whose methods will be collapsed
(hidden). This can be useful for filtering out system calls and other nonessential
functions.
Show filters let you specify a class or classes whose methods will be exclusively
shown while the rest will be collapsed. So you can emphasize specific functions
of selected classes.
If you right-click with the mouse on a function in a report view, you will be given
an option to add that function as a filter.

Function Search
dotTrace allows you to quickly locate functions and navigate to them. To perform
a function search, press Ctrl + F or click the View > Search.

Quickly find desired functions

There are two ways to locate a function:

Type in the name of a class containing your function
Type in the name of your function

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 JetBrains’ dotTrace 1.1 Reviewer’s Guide

dotTrace will highlight all calls to the found function in the current view. You can
walk between the found call paths using the F3 and Shift + F3 shortcuts. The
yellow gutter marks to the right of the view pane serve as extra shortcuts to the
found functions.

Calls to Found Function

Source View

Function to source view

dotTrace automatically locates the underlying source code for selected functions.
If necessary, you will also be able to manually specify the appropriate source
code location by browsing directly to source files.

ASP.NET Applications Profiling

dotTrace also profiles ASP.NET applications running on IIS, versions 5.x and 6.0.
Simply click Profile Web Application on the Welcome screen, specify the start
page URL of your web application and profile it the same way as any desktop
program.

Command Line Options

If you prefer using a command line to control dotTrace instead of the GUI, you
can profile applications, open snapshots and generate reports from any batch
script by using the command line options provided with dotTrace (the detailed
list of options is provided in the dotTrace help).

Profiling API
dotTrace allows you to control its profiling functions from within the application
being profiled with the help of its Profiling API.
To use the API for profiling your applications:
1. Reference JetBrains.dotTrace.Api.dll (located in the dotTrace installation
directory) in your application project
2. Surround the source code you wan to profile with the following pattern:
Feature Review List 4
 JetBrains’ dotTrace 1.1 Reviewer’s Guide

JetBrains.dotTrace.Api.CPUProfiler.Start();
//Here goes the code which you want to profile
JetBrains.dotTrace.Api.CPUProfiler.StopAndSaveSnapShot();
3. Start the profiled application from within dotTrace, and in the Control Profiling
dialog, clear Start profiling application immediately.

Additional Information
You can find the general product overview and the detailed list of features at the
official product site at http://www.jetbrains.com/profiler.
We also recommend you to view the dotTrace’s demo at
http://www.jetbrains.com/profiler/dotTrace_demo.html.

Contacts
Technical assistance Media contact
Ann Oreshnikova Jeremy Menefee
Customer Support Manager Milani Marketing & Public Relations
JetBrains, s.r.o. E-mail: jeremy@milanimarketing.com
E-mail: pti@jetbrains.com Tel. : (510) 870-8710

Thank you for reviewing

and considering JetBrains’ dotTrace!

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