One of the greatest things about being a .NET developer is the long list of development tools you have at your fingertips that can make your life a whole lot easier. This article is all about the different types of ASP.NET tools that you can use to optimize and find performance problems with this software.
Of course, depending on what you are doing with your code, some of these tools are going to be much more suited to your needs than others.
Best ASP.NET Developer Tools
1. Red Gate ANTS
If you are trying to adjust the performance of your code by breaking it down line by line, then we think that a good code profiler is going to take you a long way. They are excellent for those situations where you have a console app and want to be able to run a certain method 1000 times to adjust memory usage and CPU.
They’re also great for attaching to windows services or ASP.NET apps so that you can find hot paths within your code.
This ASP.NET developer tool provides its clients with deep analysis down to the code and method level. You can use it on your local machine, and it will even support debugging and remote profiling. You can also use it to help you track down a production performance issue. T
he only downside to this is that code level profiling is known for slowing down an app while the profiler is running. Of course, this isn’t going to work very well if you want to use the app simultaneously. We recommend that you check them out today.
2. Glimpse
The next tool on this list is a great option if you are trying to analyze the performance of your ASP.NET apps without doing complete code profiling. A tool like this can capture in-depth transaction traces about each web request that is sent from ASP.NET.
Glimpse works slightly differently from other tools out there, but their basics let you understand in-depth details about your apps’ performance, while it is in production or development. Tools like this are great for basic performance troubleshooting of ASP.NET apps because they can be helpful in the production stage without requiring too much performance.
3. Retrace
Application performance management tools like Retrace offer their clients the best of both Red Gate ANTS and Glimpse, which means that you can get a lot done with them. They have been developed to implement lightweight code profiling on a web request that isn’t going to impact the performance of your apps.
They will be able to gather high level details that you will need to identify common performance issues, as well as monitoring your production apps to make sure that they are working as normal. Retrace is one of these application performance management tools that can make all the difference to your production and profiling.
This is a great way to monitor the ongoing performance of your apps, and quickly identify when web requests are slow, as well as database queries.
4. Metrics.NET
We believe that one of the best ways to track your apps performance is by developing your own customized app metrics and keep on top of them. If you want to check in on your own custom metrics, you can develop your Windows performance counters yourself, and of course use one of many third-party services out there as well.
One great example of these developer tools is Metrics.NET. A lot of the time, it’s easier to report custom metrics to a third-party than reporting them to a Windows performance counter, and then trying to figure out how you can report the performance counter elsewhere. It basically removes one step of the process, making everything a little bit easier.
5. Splunk
If you want to keep on top of how long specific requests are taking to load, you can do so manually, but doing it on your own can be a bit complicated if you are going to monitor them constantly.
This is where a third-party log management tool comes into play, that has been developed to help you visualize and search all of your logs. It makes it easy to quickly see an IIS log file. We think that Splunk is a great option for this particular activity.
6. Web Platform Installer
We like Web Platform Installer because it is a free tool that makes it super easy for developers to install, download, and stay up to date with the latest aspects of Microsoft web platform.
This particular tool also provides a defined installation workflow, allowing for you to install open source applications for web platform. This tool comes with a built-in windows web application gallery, making it really easy to run free web applications out there for content management and blogging.
7. NuGet
NuGet used to be a free source package manager that was meant to be used just with the Microsoft development platform. However, it has since expanded its features to include many different services and tools. Additionally, they detailed how packages are hosted, expanded, and produced.
8. Chocolatey
This tool for developers has been designed to be used with windows NT platform. It is a software package manager that uses a unique packing infrastructure to provide an automation tool for its clients. This way, you can install software and Windows machines, which is going to ultimately simplify the process.
9. LINQPad
LINQPad is a tool that can help you with immediate feedback and prototyping. It comes with built-in features like an autocomplete as well as a debugger, and it can help organize the clutter in your source code folder. If you are someone who likes to test code snippets before you introduce them to the rest of your code, then you will find this tool is essential.
10. NDepend
The next tool on our list for developers is a visual studio extension that is primarily used for static code analysis. This can be helpful when it comes to optimizing your code as well as measuring the quality of the code. It is also helpful when you are trying to estimate the technical depth of your code, and it comes with custom querying language to analyze standards and efficiency.
11. ReSharper
ReSharper has been developed for code quality analysis. It can not only help you identify certain issues in your code, but it will help you solve them automatically. This tool is essential if you are trying to adjust the project structure or uplift your legacy code.
Final Thoughts
So, there you have it – what we think are some of the best ASP.NET developer tools for you to use right now if you need a little bit of a boost with your coding.
It’s not easy to get an app off the ground, and if you are trying to do it all yourself you might find that it’s close to impossible. However, if you want to implement changes or adjustments to your code without impeding on performance, you need to outsource this aspect to a third party.
Check out all of the options today and see why they’re so popular among existing clients.