scarroll's Blog
A blog about Visual Studio Profiling, Code Coverage and CS Research!
VSTS Profiler @ TechEd2007
Hey all, Marc (the QA lead) and myself (the Dev lead) of the VSTS profiler are sitting in front of...
Date: 06/04/2007
Visual Studio Launch: Bangkok (pre-game edition)
Sawatdee Khrup! So I arrived in Thailand for Visual Studio Launch which will be in BecTero Hall here...
Date: 11/14/2005
Profiling FAQ #7: What does the column name X mean?
UPDATE: msdn2 seems to be flaking on this... I stuck a msn cached version below. I just noticed that...
Date: 10/07/2005
Profiling FAQ #6: Why does the profiler say Foo calls Bar, when I know it doesn't!
Here's another fun one from the internal support alias. When you profile with the VS Profiler, you...
Date: 07/25/2005
Meltdown Profiler Tips and Tricks Talk Details
Online registration for the Meltdown DirectX conference ends tomorrow July 22. I tried my best to...
Date: 07/21/2005
Profiling FAQ #5: Why are there two copies of my function in Instrumentation mode function report?
The most common reason for this to occur in Instrumentation mode is that the dll you instrumented is...
Date: 07/21/2005
Speaking at MS Meltdown about the VS Profiler
I'm speaking at the Microsoft Meltdown 2005 conference at the end of the month. The topic is tips...
Date: 06/30/2005
Public Chat: This Wednesday
Hey folks. We have a public chat scheduled for tomorrow. I just checked the schedule and we have a...
Date: 06/13/2005
In honor of TechEd: Profiler Greatest Hits bloggin'
My illustrious co-worker, Ian, is compiling a central resource of all the most essential profiler...
Date: 06/09/2005
Doing My Part to Destroy MSFT Productivity
I had to help a high school kid solve this problem yesterday. It’s pretty interesting I think.I sent...
Date: 06/08/2005
Offtopic: Memorial Day BBQ Grill Suggestion
Total tangent here, but I just made a really great meal and I must blog about it. Side Dish: Roasted...
Date: 05/28/2005
Beta2 CLR Symbols Live!
The symbols for several key CLR Beta2 Symbols are finally on the symbol server. Go forth and...
Date: 05/27/2005
UPDATE + APOLOGY! (Some) CLR Public Symbols still not on symbol server
Sorry folks. I want to update this blog about this issue. We just made another symbol publication...
Date: 05/25/2005
Profiling Tip: Amdahl's Law and Long Sampling Runs
A lot of my graduate work was in the area of parallel computing so we spent a lot of time with...
Date: 05/19/2005
CLR Symbols for Beta 2 release imminent
There was a problem with the original publication of the CLR Symbols for some binaries (mscoree,...
Date: 05/17/2005
Lesson on Intern Mentoring from the Gilmore Girls
I took the MSFT "Intern Mentoring" training last week in preparation for the impending arrival of my...
Date: 05/16/2005
Vacation Time
I'll be on vacation for the next two weeks. I promise to be a good little blogger and write more...
Date: 04/13/2005
Profiling FAQ #4: The top sampled function is [ntdll.dll], now what do I do?!
One of our big missions here in VS Profiler land is to bring profiling tools to people who maybe...
Date: 04/13/2005
Profiling FAQ #3: How do -exclude and -include on vsinstr differ from -start / -suspend / -resume, etc.
VSinstr has two different categories of switches. The first category of switches control which...
Date: 04/13/2005
Paper Summary #2: Where the Bugs Are
Who wrote it:Thomas J. Ostrand, Elaine J. Weyuker, Robert M. Bell from ATT Labs - Research What's it...
Date: 04/13/2005
Paper Summary #1: Efficient and Precise Dynamic Impact Analysis Using Execute-After Sequences
What's the name of the paper? Efficient and Precise Dynamic Impact Analysis Using Execute-After...
Date: 04/10/2005
New Category: Research
So I'm going to try to add a new category of posts to this blog for interesting papers in Computer...
Date: 04/10/2005
Profiling FAQ #2: Why am I seeing functions from DLLs I didn't instrument in my Function view?
This is actually just a corollary of the "Why don't instrumentation and sampling calltrees look the...
Date: 04/08/2005
Profiling FAQ #1: Why doesn't my Sampling Call Tree look like my Instrumentation Call Tree
This post is adapted from an internal mail. The customers were somewhat confused about the reason...
Date: 04/08/2005
Must watch Managed Perf Primer on Channel 9
I watched all 50 minutes of Rico Mariani's new Channel9 video which can be found at...
Date: 04/07/2005
Profiling Tip #2: Managed Code profiling and the command line
The most common question that comes in to the internal profiler by far is "Why am I not seeing any...
Date: 04/07/2005
Profiling Tip #1: release vs. debug
Don't laugh! I've seen this happen a few times now. In the UI , if you are debugging your debug...
Date: 04/07/2005
What I've been up to... dogfood deployment
So over the past two months, I've been busy with the rolling out of the VS profiler to as many...
Date: 04/07/2005
Line Coverage
The Code Coverage instrumentation in Visual Studio is based on binary instrumentation instead of...
Date: 02/14/2005
Quick Survey: Coverage metrics
Hey folks, I'm taking a quick survey. If you are currently using code coverage metrics in your...
Date: 02/14/2005
Block Statistics in Code Coverage
In the code coverage analysis in VSTS, we provide two types of stats: block coverage and line...
Date: 01/14/2005
Requesting recommendations
I'm looking for a good book on performance analysis for database-centric applications and/or web...
Date: 07/14/2004
Book recommendation - The Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis
I'm about 250 pages into The Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis : Techniques for...
Date: 07/14/2004
An Introduction
Hello World. My name is Steve Carroll, and I'm a developer on the Visual Studio Team System team....
Date: 05/27/2004