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"Thanks FMS for products that are extremely powerful, unbelievably stable, great timesavers, easy to learn, and an absolute pleasure to work with!" - Alison Balter |
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Review: Improve Code Confidence
ZD Net
Australia,
Mike Gunderloy
May 29, 2003
Automated code tools can help developers locate potential problem points in their code before it ever leaves their machines.
Total .NET Analyzer
If you’re a developer who prefers to work within the Visual Studio .NET interface, take a look at Total .NET Analyzer from FMS. The FMS folks have been developing analysis tools for a good long while, and this is a mature and dependable product. It’s also completely integrated with Visual Studio .NET. Total .NET Analyzer provides its own dockable ToolWindow in which all analysis is performed.
One thing you’ll notice if you run Analyzer is that it’s fast. That’s because, as a VS.NET add-in, it keeps an eye on your code as you type it. Analyzer constantly runs your code through its own parsing engine so that when you want results back, it can deliver quickly.
The other benefit to this parsing is that Analyzer can perform some quite sophisticated analysis. For example, it can warn you about code that’s never executed because a logical condition can never be true. Other rules cover everything from variable naming that doesn’t conform to the design guidelines through warnings about the cost of boxing and unboxing.
Of the products I’ve looked at here, Total .NET Analyzer takes the most detailed look at code from all angles of best practices.
There are other benefits to Visual Studio .NET integration as well. You don’t have to search to find the line of code that’s causing a warning; just click in the ToolWindow, and you’ll be taken directly there. Also, you can get more details about errors at any time by clicking a button in the Analyzer interface; these details open as help pages within the IDE.
Of course, no product is perfect. Although there is some customizing here (you can adjust the severity or category of a rule or add your own notes), you can’t extend the list with your own rules. So if your corporate standards don’t agree with those suggested by FMS, this product could be a poor fit. Fortunately, the entire rules list is online (along with other information and a trial download) at the FMS Web site.
