Review: Analyzer That

MCP Magazine, Mike Gunderloy
November 27, 2002

Total .NET Analyzer can pinpoint problem areas in your code.

November 2002 — With this product, FMS continues the delivery of extra value to Visual Studio .NET that they started with Total .NET Xref. Total .NET Analyzer is a tool for parsing your entire solution and telling you what it thinks of your code. Well, and telling you when you've violated common design practices or written code that might well be concealing a bug.

I installed Analyzer with no trouble and ran it against a moderately substantial C# project. Ten seconds or so later, I had the results: 469 issues found. These show up in a tool window, very similar to the familiar Task List or Pending Checkins windows. You can click on any row in the list to hop directly to the line of code involved, and click another button to get more information on what Analyzer is complaining about.

A few examples from my own code:

• Warnings about using Hungarian notation instead of the now-preferred Camel Case and Pascal Case styles. Old habits die hard.

• Warnings about hard-coded strings and integers.

• Warnings about forms without help buttons or cancel buttons.

• Warnings where I should have used StringBuilders instead of simple string concatenation.

The help file explanations of all the warnings are simple and explain exactly why Analyzer is recommending a change to your code. Don't agree with a particular warning? No problem, just bring up the integrated Rule Editor and turn it off. Some rules also have additional parameters you can set. For example, you can decide whether the no-Hungarian rule should be checked for controls, or only for variables.

FMS has a long track record of delivering excellent value to Microsoft Access and VB developers. It looks like they'll be keeping this up with .NET developers.

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