ANTS Memory Profiler

ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0 Release Notes

Features and Enhancements
ANTS Memory Profiler 7 includes a number of new features and enhancements:

• Redesigned summary. This gives immediate feedback on where your memory is being used, and now warns you if problems with large object heap fragmentation are detected.
• New Instance Categorizer graph. Groups the instances of the class that you are investigating by the shortest path to the GC root, allowing you quickly to spot any paths that should not hold references to the instances.
• Redesigned and reorganized filters.
• New 'show only survivors in growing classes' filter highlights any classes where no instances were disposed between two snapshots, even though the number of instances of that class increased.
• Field properties now available on the Instance Retention Graph.
• Improved support for WPF: Dependency properties now shown with other field properties.
• Snapshot API lets you take snapshots from your code.

Supported Application Types

• Executable
• ASP.NET web application (running in IIS or web development server)
• Silverlight 4 browser application
• Windows service
• COM+ server application
• XBAP

Supported .NET Framework Versions

Your application must be built for one of the following .NET framework versions:

• 1.1
• 2.0
• 3.0
• 3.5
• 4.0
• Silverlight 4

The .NET 2.0 runtime must be installed for ANTS Memory Profiler to run.

Supported OS Versions

• Windows XP SP2 or later
• Windows Server 2003
• Windows Vista
• Windows Server 2008
• Windows 7
• Windows Server 2008 R2

Supports 32-bit and 64-bit versions of all listed OSs. Windows 2000 is no longer supported.

The following feature requires the .NET 4.0 runtime and Windows Vista or later:

• Attach to process

Other System Requirements

• 512 MB RAM (minimum)
• Internet Explorer 6+
• 1 GB free hard disk space

To use the ANTS Memory Profiler 7 add-in, you need at least one of the following versions of Microsoft Visual Studio:

• Visual Studio 2005
• Visual Studio 2008
• Visual Studio 2010

Known Issues

• For some types of application, you may have to run ANTS Memory Profiler as an administrator.
• If you have Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista x64 or Windows Server 2008 x64, it is not possible to profile ASP.NET websites on IIS. Upgrading to Internet Explorer 8 will solve this problem.
• On Windows Vista and Windows 7, after profiling IIS using attach to process, ANTS Memory Profiler 7 sometimes cannot stop the session. If this happens, restart ANTS Memory Profiler before starting a new profiling session.
• In some cases, Windows Services do not restart properly after profiling. Use services.msc to restart services if required.
• To profile an XBAP application, Internet Explorer must be set as your default browser and it must be closed before profiling.
• To profile a .NET 4 process, you must first disable concurrent garbage collection.
• A limitation in Windows means that it is not possible to successfully attach to a .NET 4 process more than once.
• SharePoint 2010 is not supported.
• The snapshot API does not work with Silverlight applications, due to security restrictions in Silverlight.

ANTS Memory Profiler 5.2
This latest version of Red Gate’s superfast, award winning memory profiler contains numerous important bug fixes, and is a recommended upgrade for all users of ANTS Memory Profiler 5.0 and 5.1:

• Fixed infinite progress hang when taking a snapshot whilst profiling Sharepoint.
• Now warns about object reference fix-up problem when running application with Server GC; this has been raised as a bug on Microsoft Connect at https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=483764.
• Fixed CouldNotMapFileException when profiling an application with more than 46,000,000 objects on a 32-bit system.
• Fixed problem where Dispose tracking only worked on debug, non-optimized builds.
• Fixed problem where cross-assembly references can cause a crash when multiple AppDomains are used.
• Fixed intermittent GDI+ errors caused by summary view graphs.
• Fixed server error from “What do I look for?” help link at bottom of class graph.
• Corrected support forum URL on Getting Started form.

ANTS Memory Profiler - .NET memory profiling made simple.

ANTS Memory Profiler presents memory profile results in a clear way.

Automatic memory management in .NET makes development a lot easier; however, it's still easy to introduce memory leaks into your application. For example, in a complex application, it's easy to forget to unregister event handlers, and these are notorious for holding on to objects which you don't need to keep in memory any more. This typically leads to an increase in memory usage, which can lead to your application exhibiting poor performance, or even running out of memory and crashing, if it remains unchecked and unresolved. This is where a memory profiler becomes necessary.

Why is it easy to work with ANTS Memory Profiler 5?

• It shows you where to start, by taking you through the most effective workflow
• It displays profiling results in a clear, meaningful way, making it easier for you to interpret the information
• It displays the relationship between objects using graphical representations, so you don't have to build a mental map of your applications' memory usage in your head
• It offers powerful filtering options, so you can narrow your search down to the object you really need to know about. Filters will help in the analysis of even the most complicated applications

ANTS Memory Profiler Features:

• Ability to take and analyse an arbitrarily large number of memory snapshots
• Support for snapshots up to 2GB (32-bit operating systems), and 4GB (64-bit operating systems)
• Arbitrary snapshot comparisons
• Summary information for profiling session, individual snapshots, and snapshot comparisons
• Large object heap fragmentation statistics
• Powerful filtering options to narrow your search down to the objects you really need to know about. Standard object filters and advanced object filters available
• Unique class reference view which allows you to quickly see where instances of a given class are being referenced
• Object retention graph quickly allows you to see the shortest reference paths to all GC roots which will need to be broken to fix memory leaks
• One-step Set-up dialog
• Ability to profile .NET executables, ASP.NET applications and web services in IIS and web development server, services, COM+ applications, and XBAP applications
• Integration with Visual Studio 2005 and 2008, so you can start profiling your application from within your IDE. One click launches ANTS Memory Profiler within seconds, with the executable path already set

Feature list:

• Profile any .NET language. It doesn't matter whether you're programming in C#, VB.NET, managed C++, or in COBOL.NET. If you're programming for the .NET Framework, then ANTS Profiler can help you
• Profile ASP.NET web applications so you can identify slow code in your .NET websites and web services. ANTS Profiler will identify slow-loading pages and, more importantly, tell you why they are slow
• Profile Windows Forms applications so you can optimize rich, client-side applications
• Profile .NET 3.0 and .NET 3.5 applications - WCF (Indigo), WPF (Avalon), WF, XBAP
• Profile web applications on IIS 5, IIS 5.1, IIS 6, IIS 7, and ASP.NET Development Web Server (Cassini)
• Support for 64-bit profiling on x64 processors
• Integration with Visual Studio 2005 and 2008, so you can start profiling your application from within your IDE. One click launches ANTS Profiler within seconds, with the executable path already set. Context sensitivity lets you set up what method, class or namespace you want to profile, without having to remember its name
• Timeline for zeroing in on problem code; select a region of activity and view the data just for that region
• Call tree which auto-expands the worst performing stack traces
• Call graph for visualizing all the callers and callees for a particular method

Additional features available in ANTS Profiler Pro

• Method-level profiling (faster mode) which introduces less overhead than when the profiler also records line-level timings
• Profile memory to understand how your application uses memory, and to locate memory leaks. The memory profiler allows you to take snapshots at any point in the execution of your program, so you can see what memory is in use at that point. You can take multiple snapshots at different times while your application is running, so you can compare application memory states

Purchasing a support contract provides you with free upgrades as well as support.

• Upgrades - For the duration of the support contract you will not need to pay for upgrades.
• Support - For the duration of the support contract, you will receive support on the use of the products by email and, if necessary, by telephone or video conference.