Profiling Visual Basic Programs with Quantify Standalone

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1.    Open the Run Program dialog box.

2.    In Collect Data From, select Unmanaged code to profile a native code program, Managed code to profile a p-code program or a Visual Basic .NET managed program.

3.    In Program name, click images\brbut.gif to select the name of the program you want to profile.

4.    In Command-line arguments, enter any arguments required by your program.

5.    Specify the working directory to use for the current run.

6.    Click Settings to specify settings for this and future runs of the program.

7.    Click Run. Quantify starts profiling the program and displays the Run Summary window.

Notes:

§      To stop profiling a program, select File > Cancel Run or click images\endproc.gif

§      To rerun a program with the same settings, select File > Run Again or click images\runagain.gif

§      Line level performance data is not available when you profile a Visual Basic p-code program.

§      When you profile p-code launched by a container program, Quantify collects performance data for any Visual Basic p-code that runs before your p-code is run. If this occurs, you can stop and start recording to focus data collection on your p-code. Do this using the Run Control toolbar or Quantify API functions.

§      The Visual Basic default compile option is to compile to p-code. To compile to native code instead, select Project > <project name> Properties and, in the Compile tab, select Compile to Native Code. Select also No Optimization and Create Symbolic Debug Info. Then select File > Make <project>.exe. Visual Basic makes the native-code executable file, creates the associated .pdb files, and places them in the program directory.

§      The Microsoft Visual Basic native-code compiler currently does not:

§      Encode any information about a procedure's arguments. Consequently, Quantify displays the argument list as (...) in all cases.

§      Retain project and sub-project information about procedures. Consequently, if you have a main project called MyVBProject and a sub-project called VBHello, and it defines a procedure called HiWorld, Quantify displays the name as VBHello.HiWorld(...), rather than as MyVBProject.VBHello.HiWorld().

§      Quantify uses the debug information in .pdb files to compose the procedure names it displays. In general, procedure and subroutine names in .frm files appear as Module.procedure(...). Procedures in .bas files appear as Procedure(...).

§      Debug symbol data must be available for Quantify to identify a procedure. If it is not, Quantify labels the procedures UnnamedProcedure@<offset>; for example, UnnamedProcedure@0x124d. For certain procedures, Visual Basic never provides symbol data.

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