Introducing Report Generator

Quite often, to analyze how an application is working and to view its state at certain moment, developers use dump files and event logs generated for a running instance of the application. The dump files contain various information that can be helpful for application debugging. For example, dump files usually include a memory dump, information about threads running in the application process, CPU registers, modules used by the process, call stack, and so on. The event log is also very useful for analyzing the application behavior. It can contain the loaded resource DLLs, errors that occurred during the application run, and other helpful information.

The Report Generator utility allows you to generate advanced reports that include event logs and dump files for the needed processes running in the system.

Dump files that the Report Generator creates have a standard format, so, these files can be opened for viewing in various tools. For instance, you can use Microsoft Visual Studio or the WinDbg tool from Microsoft Debugging Tools for Windows.

The reports are packed into ZIP archives so that you can easily send them via e-mail later.

If the user has a problem with an application (for instance, it works incorrectly, hangs or crashes) and asks the application developers for help, they may ask the user to send them a dump or an event log for this application. Such files contain information about the state of the application at certain moment and can help the development team find the cause of the problem and solve it faster.

Report Generator is an easy-to-use utility that is supplied along with TestExecute and lets you generate dump files and event logs in a few clicks. Besides that, using the utility does not require extensive development experience and can be used by any member of your team.

For a step-by-step instructions on how to work with the Report Generator utility, see the Working With the Report Generator help topic.