Profilers for a Component World

NuMega's TrueTime and Rational's Visual Quantify pinpoint performance bottlenecks.

Steve Apiki

Rapid application development doesn't often, unfortunately, lead to the development of rapid applications. NuMega's TrueTime and Rational's Visual Quantify seek to remedy this by analyzing the performance of component-based Windows software. Both profilers "instrument" Windows programs: They add instructions that unobtrusively time each line of source as the program runs (see the sidebar "Code Instrumentation"), then provide timing results in a variety of formats.

TrueTime's strength is its clear, immediate presentation of the most relevant data. It displays a tree view that splits modules in your code from the rest of the system, then ranks each module by the amount of time it consumed. You can see line-by-line timing results presented alongside your source, or detailed function analysis that sh ows pie charts ranking each caller and callee by call frequency. TrueTime's straightforward analysis gets you to the performance bottlenecks in your code within a few mouse clicks.

TrueTime works with Visual Basic only, and it can time ActiveX components written in VB, but it can't instrument components developed in Visual C++, even with the source. Fortunately, TrueTime can delve deeply into those components, providing timing for ActiveX interfaces exported from controls.

Visual Quantify works equally well with VB, VC++, and Java. To test a VB or VC++ application, you run Visual Quantify and p oint it at the executable. Instrumentation is faster with Visual Quantify than with TrueTime (14 seconds versus 35 in our test program), but because so many modules are instrumented the first time through, the initial load process is long. You can profile your own VC++ components from within your VB application right down to each source line.

Visual Quantify's main results screen is a call graph, which I found harder to use than TrueTime's results display. Visual Quantify does have unique analysis tools; the best of these, a "delta" analysis, lets you visually compare different runs on the call graph. This is the easiest way I've seen to evaluate the effects of making performance-oriented changes.

Both TrueTime and Visual Quantify do the job, delivering much the same information. Both products are evolving: Versions of TrueTime for Visual C++ will give it better coverage, while Rational plans a clearer user interface in upcoming releases. Right now, TrueTime's better presentation gives it an edge, making it the better choice for VB developers.

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Product Information

NuMega TrueTime 1.0.............................$399
 (Windows 95, NT)
NuMega Technologies
Nashua, NH
Phone:    800-468-6342
Phone:    603-578-8400
Internet: http://www.numega.com

Rational Visual Quantify 4.0....................$550
 (NT 3.51 or higher)
Rational Software 
Cupertino, CA
Phone:    800-228-9922
Phone:    408-863-9900
Internet: http://www.rational.com

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BB= TrueTime 1.0 Ratings

Technology	*	*	*	*
Implementation	*	*	*	*	*
Performance	*	*	*
Key: ***** Outstanding, **** Very Good, *** Good, ** Fair, * Poor

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Visual Quantify 4.0 Ratings

Technology	*	*	*	*
Implementation	*	*	*	*
Performance	*	*	*
Key: ***** Outstanding, **** Very Good, *** Good, ** Fair, * Poor

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BB=TrueTime 1.0

screen_link (33 Kbytes)

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Visual Quantify 4.0

screen_link (23 Kbytes)

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Steve Apiki, a programmer and BYTE consulting editor, can be reached by e-mail at apiki@AppropriateSolutions.com .