AQtime - Integration into Microsoft Visual Studio & Team System

AQtime can be tightly integrated in the Visual Studio IDE. This integration provides developers with full control over AQtime without leaving the Visual Studio IDE, ensuring a continuous application development experience. Leveraging the tremendous power of AQtime’s unparalleled application analysis tools is now as easy as debugging from the IDE.

To achieve this high level of integration, AutomatedQA Corp. participates in the Visual Studio Integration Program (VSIP). Currently AQtime extends the following versions of Microsoft Visual Studio:

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2008
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005
• Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003
• Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2002

AQtime also includes a special package for integrating with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System. This package gives Quality Assurance engineers and testers the possibility to extend Visual Studio test projects with AQtime projects. Test projects created in Visual Studio run AQtime to search for memory or resource leaks in the application or to check the platform compliance. This feature makes your testing even more flexible and powerful.

Extending Visual Studio IDE

AQtime extends the Microsoft Visual Studio's integrated development environment (IDE) in the following ways:

Hosting AQtime Panels in the Visual Studio IDE

All AQtime panels - Setup, Report, Summary, Call Graph, Assistant, and others - become true Visual Studio panels. They are displayed as a project structure:

The AQtime panels ease of use is enhanced by toolbars placed within AQtime's panels. These toolbars surface the most common window-related commands to the user.

When you open an AQtime project in Visual Studio, the layout of the Visual Studio panels and windows is extended with AQtime-specific panels. When an AQtime project is closed, these panels are automatically hidden within Visual Studio.

When you are running a profiler, AQtime hides AQtime's design-time set of panels and displays the run-time set of panels. For example, the Setup panel is useful only while configuring an AQtime project and it hides automatically while the profiled application is being executed. AQtime makes it visible again once the profile run is completed and you are ready for further setup-related tasks.

The set of visible AQtime panels can be toggled at any moment via the Toggle Panels menu and toolbar item.

Adding a New AQtime Project Type

You can create AQtime projects or add them to an existing Visual Studio solution the same way that you create or add other VS projects; by using the Create Project and Add New Project dialogs of Visual Studio.

The contents of an AQtime project are displayed in the Solution Explorer. An AQtime project contains the categorized list of all AQtime panels and provides you with a quick way to access them.

AQtime also adds the Profile | Add AQtime Project item to the Visual Studio menu:

This command provides a quick shortcut to create a new AQtime project for an existing solution.

After you have added an AQtime project, you can add all executables, compiled by the solution's projects, to your new AQtime project. To do this, right-click the AQtime project in the Solution Explorer and select Add Output from the context menu. This will invoke the Add Project Output dialog where you can choose the projects to be added:

Integration of AQtime Menus and Toolbars

AQtime adds menu items and toolbars to Visual Studio's menu and toolbar system.

To enhance the functionality of AQtime and reduce the duplication of commands, shared commands are widely used. For example, most of the standard commands (Select All, Delete, Print, Find, and others) are applicable to AQtime panels.

Further Integration with the Visual Studio Environment

In addition to the core integration, AQtime supports advanced integration that displays product information in the About dialog box and on the splash screen, integration with the context-sensitive help (Dynamic Help), Properties window support, integration into Visual Studio's Code Editor and Start Page, and more. Continue reading for more details about these features.

When you are working with AQtime in Visual Studio, the Dynamic Help window provides a list of help topics specific to the current context or the task you are currently working on.

Another important feature is the integration into Visual Studio's Code Editor. AQtime inserts a grid within the Editor’s gutter. It displays detailed information collected by a profiler for each source code line. The editor is automatically displayed when you double-click on a routine in one of AQtime’s panels (Setup, Report, Details, Call Graph and others). Additionally, you can use the Edit | Show Source File menu item and it will show the editor with the source file for the currently selected routine.

When AQtime is successfully installed, it adds an icon to the splash screen and is listed in the About dialog box. You will also find more info on the product under AQtime on the Web submenu of the Help menu.

Contributing to the Automation Model

The automation model of Visual Studio provides users with the ability to create custom add-ins, wizards, and work with macros. As a true Visual Studio-integrated product, AQtime provides program interfaces for its internals (for example, for the Projects interface). This allows third-party developers to create Visual Studio add-ins, wizards and macros that use AQtime’s object model.

Integrating into the Visual Studio Help system

The AQtime help system is fully integrated into the Visual Studio Help system. F1 context-sensitive Help is provided for all AQtime panels, dialogs and project items.

Integration into Microsoft Visual Studio Team System

AQtime adds a new AQtime test to the list of available test items:

To integrate AQtime tests into your Visual Studio tests, simply add the AQtime test item to your test project. The item will appear in the Solution Explorer as a child node of your test project.

You can modify the test item properties to select the profiler to be used for your tests, AQtime project to be run, and TestComplete project that can be used (if needed) to simulate user actions.

AQtime test results are shown in Visual Studio just like any other test item's results: