Tools for Performance Testing ASP.NET

Just came across this rather interesting post by “morgan” on the blog PHP vs. .NET in the oft-used “Top x Tools to do Y” format (always popular in the dev community).  Despite being common, I think Morgan’s list is a good compilation of resources that should be in your kit if you’re developing ASP.NET solutions, including SharePoint:

1. Code Profiling – RedGate ANTS – Personally, I use AQTime because it works well with both ASP.NET and SharePoint 2003/2007 instances.
2. App Stress Tool – NeoLoad – Never used it myself, as I’ve preferred to use Visual Studio Team System’s web test projects for this purpose.
3. Performance Monitoring – perfmon – But of course!  You can also hook up VSTS to track performance counters and record results – this feature has been available in Visual Studio since 2005, and offers a better way of visualizing this critical operational data.  Mind you, if you are on a server and just need to see what’s what, perfmon is still the standard.  Looks even better on 2008!
4. HTTP Recorder – Fiddler 2 – No arguments here.
5. Interface Manipulation – FireBug – Definitely one of the best browser add-ons;  I use it interchangeably with the IE Developer Toolbar.
6. Debugger -Windbg – This is a given;  if you’ve never used it, give it a whirl:  It’s a great tool.
7. FX-Cop – For policing the standards to keep the code clean;  it’s worthwhile, even if you’re a one-man show.
8. ViewState Decoder – A good idea for ASP.NET and SharePoint apps – Sometimes ya gotta see what’s going on in that mess of stateful info on your page.
9. Text Editor – UltraEdit/Notepad2 – I prefer the latter – to each their own.  I definitely like being able to bring up a lightweight editor with syntax highlighting, regex patterns, hotkeys and shortcuts, etc.

Morgan also offers up the venerable .NET Reflector by Lutz Roeder – a staple if you’re developing against the SharePoint API since the documentation can be at odds with reality.  It’s great to be able to crack open Microsoft.Sharepoint, find your object and see how it works in disassembled C# or VB.NET or any other .NET language.