Profiling Out-of-Browser Silverlight Applications

Preparing an Application for Profiling

Preparing an AQTime Project

Profiling Procedure

To profile a Silverlight application with AQTime, there is no need to prepare the application in a special way.

Some preparations are required only if you need to profile individual source lines of your Silverlight application. In this case, you need to compile the application with debug information. See How AQTime Profilers Use Metadata and Debug Information for detailed information on how to do this.

1. Launch AQTime and create a new empty AQTime project.

2. Add the profiled application’s dll to the Modules pane.

3. Choose the elements to be profiled by adding them to areas or select Entire .NET Code or All Project Modules to profile all the routines.

4. Specify the profiling level.

   Note that to profile the code of a Silverlight application by lines, the application must be compiled with debug information (see above). If you install a Silverlight application from the Web, the application will not include debug information, so you can profile this application only at the routine level.

5. Select the Normal profiling mode on AQTime’s Standard toolbar.

   Select the Normal profiling mode on Visual Studio’s AQTime toolbar.

   Select the Normal profiling mode on RAD Studio’s AQTime Profiling Modes toolbar.

6. Choose Run > Parameters from AQTime’s main menu.Choose AQTime > Parameters from Visual Studio’s main menu.Choose AQTime > Parameters from RAD Studio’s menu. This will invoke the Run Parameters dialog.

7. In the Specify custom host application box, specify the path to SLLaucher.exe. SLLauncher is part of the Silverlight runtime and the tool that is used to run offline Silverlight applications.

8. In the Parameters edit box, specify the following parameters:

   • If the profiled application was compiled as out-of-browser on a local machine, specify the path to the HTML file that is generated with your Silverlight application.
   • If you installed the profiled application from the Web, specify the command-line parameters that are specified in the application's properties.

9. Click OK to save the changes and close the dialog.

10. Select the needed profiler from the Profilers drop-down list on the Standard toolbar. For a list of available profilers, see Supported Profilers.

Now, the project is ready for profiling.

1. Start the profiling in AQTime. AQTime will launch SLLauncher, which, in its turn, will run your Silverlight application.

   Profiling Silverlight applications by attaching a profiler to a running Silverlight application is currently not supported.

2. Perform the needed actions over the application. AQTime will profile it.

3. To generate results, either close the application, or use the Get Results command. AQTime will display the profiling results in its panels.

   If you profile your application with the Entire .NET Code (Routines only) area enabled, AQTime reports the results of Silverlight code profiling along with the profiling results of other CLR routines that were called from your application. To distinguish the Silverlight application’s routines among other .NET routines in the Report panel, use the Module Name column. Grouping the results by this column lets you quickly find the routines of your application.