PROFILE 27 - How to profile web apps on dev web server

Brian Donahue

• Date: 07 Oct 2006
• Versions affected: Ants Profiler 2.x

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 provides a method of debugging web applications without the need to install them in Internet Information Server. This is being more commonly used by developers in order to 'streamline' the debugging process. The 'development web server' is integrated into Visual Studio, but can also be used by ANTS Profiler for situations where IIS is experiencing problems or is considered too much of a heavyweight on system resources.

ANTS Profiler can use the development web server in place of IIS for profiling an ASP .NET web aplication on all computers that have the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 installed. To use the development web server with ANTS Profiler, follow these steps:

• Start ANTS Profiler
• Select either Profile memory or Profile performance
• Select .NET desktop application as the type of project
• Click the elipsis (...) to the right of .NET desktop application and browse to c:\windows\microsoft.net\Framework\v2.0.50727 and select Webdev.WebServer.exe
• Let the working directory automatically update
• Fill in the arguments necessary to start your web application:
  /Path:"c:\inetpub\MyApp" -the path to the web application on your hard drive
  /port:8080 -a TCP port not currently used by IIS (or other app)
  /vpath:"/MyApp" -the name of the virtual directory where the app normally is found in when you run it in IIS
• Choose what code to profile and click Finish
• Start a web browser and enter the address of the web app on your local machine, in this case http://localhost:8080/MyApp
• Use ANTS Profiler as normal (take snapshot, etc)
• When you are finished, close the web browser and then the console window launched by webdev.webserver.

WebDev.Webserver is a more lightweight web server than IIS and has been specially designed for debugging web applications. We consider this to be the 'preferred solution' for profiling web applications.

Brian Donahue

ANTS Profiler 3 now has built-in support for the Microsoft Development Web Server as an option for profiling ASP .NET web applications.