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VS2008 AJAX Profiling Extensions

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Today, the team released Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 AJAX Profiling Extensions - a new power tool to measure the performance of the portions of web applications that execute JavaScript inside the web browser.

The AJAX Profiling Extensions provide much-needed visibility into often complex, web client-side interactions for the first time. You do not need to download and install any additional software, plug-ins, or ActiveX controls on the machine where the AJAX web client code is running to use the AJAX Profiling Extensions to gather JavaScript execution-time data. Also, this works with any web browser, including, of course, the latest version of Internet Explorer.

AJAX Profiling Extensions is an add-on to the performance tools that are available in Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition and Visual Studio Team Suite, extending them to allow you to profile the client-side JavaScript code in your AJAX application.

Developed in collaboration with Microsoft Research, AJAX Profiling Extensions automatically rewrites JavaScript functions to enable instrumentation that measures and logs each function’s performance data. This performance data is then periodically uploaded from the client browser to the IIS web server, where it is collected and available for analysis.

How it Works

AJAX Profiling Extensions consist of two major pieces:

1. a server-side component that handles JavaScript instrumentation and data collection

2. a Visual Studio Team System add-in that reads and analyzes the performance data gathered into the Visual Studio Performance Explorer.

The server-side component installs into the IIS 7.0 integrated pipeline and adds instrumentation to your JavaScript code on the fly before it is sent to the web browser. The AJAX Profiling Extensions are designed to work with any web browser, but they require IIS 7.0 running in Integrated Pipeline mode. A Profiling Extensions Administration panel on the web server allows you to define and manage profiling sessions.

Administration Panel

Once you have gathered AJAX client performance data, you can install AJAX Profiling Extensions onto your copy of Visual Studio 2008 Team Development Edition or Visual Studio Team Suite. You can then use the Visual Studio Profiler to analyze the performance data gathered from your client-side JavaScript applications. The Visual Studio Profiler will provide data such as which JavaScript functions your application is calling most frequently and which ones take the longest amount time to process. As you are analyzing the data, you can navigate directly to JavaScript source.

Report Summary

To get started monitoring the performance of your client-side AJAX code, download Visual Studio 2008 AJAX Profiling Extensions from Code Gallery, then join the discussion.

Namaste!

Comments

  • Anonymous
    April 29, 2009
    Originating in Microsoft Research as Ajax View , the Visual Studio 2008 AJAX Profiling Extensions Power

  • Anonymous
    April 29, 2009
    A lot of us is still "stuck" with IIS6. Any support for that?

  • Anonymous
    April 29, 2009
    Thank you for submitting this cool story - Trackback from DotNetShoutout

  • Anonymous
    April 30, 2009
    Thank you for submitting this cool story - Trackback from progg.ru

  • Anonymous
    April 30, 2009
    Tomas: No, unfortunately, the extension doesn't work under IIS6.  The tool is written in managed code and requires support that's only in IIS7 to let it rewrite the JavaScript.

  • Anonymous
    April 30, 2009
    Any chance that profiling will be a standard feature in VS10 professional edition and not just in the much more expensive TFS?  VS6 had instruction level profiling included in the least expensive version.

  • Anonymous
    May 01, 2009
    Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 AJAX Profiling Extensions is a new power tool to measure the performance

  • Anonymous
    May 01, 2009
    Greg: unfortunately, no, currently there aren't any plans to release the Visual Studio Profiler as part of the Express or Pro products.

  • Anonymous
    May 04, 2009
    I have used AJAX View (i guess it the former version) and it didnt work well, what is the level of testing this framework got?

  • Anonymous
    May 04, 2009
    Ran, This released version was subjected to a much more intensive QA and testing process internally than any previous versions you may have played with. We do not have any Known problems, other than the documented "gotchas" in the installation notes. And it is a supported tool, so we want to hear from you if you run into any problems at your end. If we can find the problem & fix it, we will. Thanks. -- Mark

  • Anonymous
    May 04, 2009
    One new subscriber from iNezha Alerts

  • Anonymous
    May 09, 2009
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    May 09, 2009
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  • Anonymous
    May 13, 2009
    Our team, in conjunction with Microsoft Research, have been working on a power tool known as AjaxView

  • Anonymous
    May 13, 2009
    Our team, in conjunction with Microsoft Research, have been working on a power tool known as AjaxView

  • Anonymous
    May 13, 2009
    Have you investigated the use of the end user monitoring with AVIcode's Intercept studio? Ari

  • Anonymous
    May 13, 2009
    The AJAX Profiling Extensions provide much-needed visibility into often complex, web client-side interactions

  • Anonymous
    May 13, 2009
    Microsoft anuncia el Service Pack 1 para Surface : Soporte para XNA (entre otras APIs), mejores respuestas

  • Anonymous
    May 13, 2009
    Hi, Very cool features. We will use that . Thanks, Thani