Gurock Software Forum

Re: Feature Request Watches and Report/Printing

Stephan Rabich — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:51:55 GMT

Oh sorry for the missunderstanding.
I mean for the second point (smallest time unit and inspect boolean values) the watches graphs.

Re: Viewing all log entries and understanding them...

Tobias Gurock — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:54:08 GMT

Hello Michael,

Quote
I can extend the rightmost column that shows the time. ...

That's a known limitation of the underlying tree view control. We are looking into ways how to improve this. What usually helps in this situation is, if the tree is growing to the right because of unmatched Enter/Leave pairs, to insert a 'Reset Call Stack' log entry (Edit | Reset Call Stack) to reset the tree.

Quote
Yet, if you look at the log, you see that it has logged several calls of GetRowFromCurrentRecord, while there are no calls of subroutines in my code. ...

I also guess that these log statements come indeed from different threads. To verify this, you can apply a so-called AutoView rule which lets you, among other things, create a new view for each thread in the current log.

Several simple rules are already built-in and can be found under 'Edit | Apply Built-in AutoView Rules'. Custom rules can be added with the AutoView rules dialog (Edit | AutoView Rules). So, if you apply the built-in 'Thread Rule', the Console will open a new view for each thread in your log and you can easily see your log statements independently from other threads. This should help you to find out if your method is really called from multiple threads.

Viewing all log entries and understanding them...

MBaas — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:33:35 GMT

Hi,

one screenshot, a bit of code and two questions

1) I can extend the rightmost column that shows the time. With the title-column, I saw that I drag the divider to the right of the control and it would add that width, but for the time-column this doesn't work.

The next question is about VB.net-logging (and sequence of execution and logging).
below is the code which was logged in the screenshot above:

              SiAuto.Main.LogString("defval893 VOR Aufruf GFCR",defval893.Value)
              defval893.Value = GetFromCurrentRecord("id_stammvpm","DropDownList","TplDropDownList893") 
              SiAuto.Main.LogString("defval893 NACH Aufruf GFCR",defval893.Value)
              if MultiView1.ActiveViewIndex = 0 Then
	              SiAuto.Main.LogObject("GridView1",GridView1)
  	            SiAuto.Main.LogObject("GridView1.FooterRow","GridView1.FooterRow")
  	          	if GridView1.FooterRow is Nothing Then
  	          		SiAuto.Main.LogMessage("Footer undefiniert!")
  	          	else 
	              	ctl = GridView1.FooterRow.FindControl("FooterTplDropDownList893")
              		ctl.SelectedValue=defval893.Value
		              SiAuto.Main.LogString("defval893",defval893.Value)
  	          		SiAuto.Main.LogString("selval",ctl.SelectedValue)
              	end if
              end if
              SqlDataSource1.InsertParameters("id_stammvpm").DefaultValue=defval893.Value

Now, in that code we can basically see the sub "GetFromCurrentRecord" is only called in the 2nd line, thereafter we see a lot of different logs and no calls of other subs. Yet, if you look at the log, you see that it has logged several calls of GetRowFromCurrentRecord, while there are no calls of subroutines in my code.
Two possible explanations I could think of:
1) the log doesn't show the entries in exact order of time. Unfortunately I couldn't verify that idea, as I couldn't make the time-column wide enough. (see #1).
2) ASP.NET was executing in multiple threads and called GetRowFromCurrentRecord as part of execution of some <%-code.

Or could there be another reason? Are there perhaps additional features in SI that I could use to find out more about the 'calling environment'?

Re: Logging in javascript?

MBaas — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:21:17 GMT

Great, thanks!

Re: Logging in javascript?

Tobias Gurock — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:09:24 GMT

I added it to the feature request list and we will look into it whether it's possible or not. It would indeed be interesting as Javascript can get quite tedious to debug. A SmartInspect library (maybe even a very basic one) would probably help a lot.

Thanks for the suggestion!

Re: Logging in javascript?

MBaas — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:11:53 GMT

Ooops, I wasn't logged in when I replied - but of course I was the Guest

Re: Logging in javascript?

Hi Tobias, — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:09:48 GMT

Hi Tobias,

thanks for the quick reply. I don't know JS well enough myself to answer about the TCP-sockets, but I would hope that (maybe as part of some Ajax-framework) this could be done.

Maybe something for V3.5...

Re: Logging in javascript?

Tobias Gurock — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:18:15 GMT

Hello Michael,

There's unfortunately currently no direct way to use SmartInspect with Javascript. I'm not even sure if it's possible at all (does Javascript have an API for TCP sockets?). The only way I think this could work is by using Ajax to call some server routines that then forward the logging data to SmartInspect.

Logging in javascript?

MBaas — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 09:14:35 GMT

Hi,

I just searched the forum for "javascript" and got no matches - now there will be at least one

Would like to know if there is any way to call SI from JS, because it would certainly make sense to have that logging integrated (especially during development, when all runs on the same machine).

All the best

Michael

Re: Feature Request Watches and Report/Printing

Dennis Gurock — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:14:57 GMT

Hi Stephan,

Thanks for the suggestions. I know that the printing and exporting features could be improved and we will consider it for a future update. It's a request that comes regularly but so far other things have been more important.

Quote
I will use the log file to inspect the timing of the application. It is possible but the smallest unit is seconds.

You can configure the time and date format in the SmartInspect options (Tools menu > Options, then the Time Format tab). For example, to include seconds and micro seconds, you can specify the following format. Please also take a look at the online help topic 'Working with SmartInspect | High-Resolution Timestamps' to learn how to generate more accurate timestamps in your logs.

dd.mm.yyyy hh:nn:ss.uuuuuu

About the boolean values: do you mean in the Watches toolbox, in the log entry list or in the Graph toolbox? Thanks.

Feature Request Watches and Report/Printing

Stephan Rabich — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:44:14 GMT

Hello,

I'm using SmartInspect since a couple of weeks and I'm very satisfied.
Some features I'm missing.
1. During printing or export only the titles of the lines will displayed not the other columns. It would be very helpful for documentation when all columns are exported or printed.
And by the way it would be very nice if the printing keeps the collapsing of entries (at the moment during printing and exporting all entries are automatically expand)

2. I will use the log file to inspect the timing of the application. It is possible but the smallest unit is seconds. It would be very helpful if the smallest unit is microsecond respectively I can zoom in manually. The second very helpfully thing would be the display of boolean values as an rectangle graph. At the moment I use integer instead of boolean but the result looks not very good to inspect boolean values.

Re: Watch interaction with ProcessFlows

Tobias Gurock — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 13:25:46 GMT

Hello Scott,

You are right that watches currently do not have any process or thread information and are not directly related to the current view. There's the Selected tab in the Watches toolbox which shows the current watch values for the selected log entry but I think a better integration between watches and general log entries sounds like a good idea. I added it to our feature request list, thanks.

However, have you thought about using the standard LogValue methods instead of (or maybe in combination with) watches? This way the logged variable values would be shown directly in the context of the corresponding method.

Watch interaction with ProcessFlows

ScottM — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 06:11:28 GMT

Giday,

I am currently using SmartInspect to instrument our in-house written interpreter... As far as I understand the watches are global in nature as the packets don't have process and thread information... Have you thought about about supporting something similar to Watches but being sensitive to the current process flow so that only the "Locals" within the current method are displayed?

Thanks.

Scott.

Re: Still Problem with %p specifier

Tobias Gurock — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 18:47:51 GMT

That's still the same problem with the WideFormat routine. I submitted it long ago as a Delphi bug but I guess it's still in there. I think it will be fixed with the upcoming Delphi 2009 as this version will be completely Unicode based and we can then use the normal Format routine again.

As an alternative to using %p, you could also use the following:

SiMain.LogDebug('%.8x', [Cardinal(Pointer(myObj))]);

Re: Sync Button

Tobias Gurock — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 18:43:13 GMT

Hello Giuseppe,

Great to hear that you like the Synchronize View feature and SmartInspect 3.0 in general. I think a toolbar icon for the Sync feature would be a good idea. I am not so sure about adding it to the context menu though because the menu is already quite crowded (but we will look into it). I personally use the shortcut for this feature (Ctrl+Y) and find it quite convenient to navigate through the list of views with the keyboard.

Regarding the 4.0, we have some ideas about what we would like to do next but we haven't made any decisions yet. But we are looking into gathering feedback from our customers (probably with a survey or something similar) in the future.

Thanks for the feedback!

Still Problem with %p specifier

Giuseppe Monteleone — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:37:24 GMT

In SI 3.0.5
%p specifier still don't work

I need write

SiMain.LogDebug(Format('Test %p',[Pointer(myObj)])

and not simple
SiMain.LogDebug('Test %p',[Pointer(myObj)])

Regards
Ing Giuseppe Monteleone

Sync Button

Giuseppe Monteleone — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:26:25 GMT

Sync is really a fantastic feature but could be better:

can you put a button on ribbon and a context menu voice to sync quickly with other view ?

Thanks
Ing Giuseppe Monteleone

P.S: SI 3.0 is perfect. What Will you invent next year for SI 4.0 ?

Re: Stops Vista x64 from rebooting

Tobias Gurock — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:22:59 GMT

Hello,

Thanks for the bug report. This problem is known and a fix is already included in 3.0.6.

Stops Vista x64 from rebooting

NC Software — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 23:39:50 GMT

3.0.5.x installed, try to reboot Windows and SmartInspect (running in the tray) always throws an error and blocks the reboot. Vista shows me a dialog and I tell it to proceed with the reboot.

I see that 3.0.6.x is available so I just downloaded it and will see/hope it fixes the issue.

FYI

Re: FEATURE - export settings

Tobias Gurock — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:08:27 GMT

Hello Piotr,

Yes, you are right. Polishing up the HTML export unfortunately didn't make it into the 3.0 but it's definitely on our list. We also think about writing an exporter tool (with the help of the SmartInspect SDK) which can be used without the Console and which would make it easier to customize and automate the export of log files.

FEATURE - export settings

Piotr Rezmer — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:32:54 GMT

Hello,
I think it would be useful to have ability to export visible columns content when saving log entries to html file. Currently, only log title is stored in html. I think it is very useful to have at least time column

best regards
Piotr Rezmer

SmartInspect 3.0 is available for download

Dennis Gurock — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:50:21 GMT

Hello,

This is a quick note that we just uploaded the final version of SmartInspect 3.0 to our website. You can download the new trial version from our download area and the full version from My Gurock.com.

We will officially launch SmartInspect 3.0 next week, so there aren't any announcements or updates to the What's New page yet. You can learn more about new features and enhancements on our blog.

Re: SmartInspect 2.x and Vista

Tobias Gurock — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:45:05 GMT

Hello Darren,

I suspect that this has something to do with the access rights of your web application. Vista has changed a lot in this regard when compared to XP. To check if this is really the problem, it would be great if you can assign an event handler to the SmartInspect Error event and see if your handler is called. An event handler can be assigned as follows:

public static void EventHandler(object sender, ErrorEventArgs args)
{
    // Output the exception
   ...
}

...

// Register our event handler for the error event.
SiAuto.Si.Error += new ErrorEventHandler(EventHandler);

Sub EventHandler(ByVal Sender As Object, ByVal Args As ErrorEventArgs)
    ' Output the error
    ...
End Sub

...

' Register our event handler for the error event.
AddHandler SiAuto.Si.Error, AddressOf EventHandler

In the error event handler, you can either set a break point or output the passed exception as part of the ASP.NET page.

SmartInspect 2.x and Vista

Darren — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 02:31:01 GMT

I am using SmartInspect with windows vista and IIS.
Under XP I get logging through tcp and file but when I setup my web application under Vista Ultimate, no logging occurs at all.

Any ideas?

SmartInspect 3.0 Preview Postings

Dennis Gurock — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:53:17 GMT

Hello,

we have started to post about new features of the upcoming SmartInspect 3.0 release over on our blog:

http://blog.gurock.com/

We will continue to publish new postings over the next few days, so make sure to subscribe to our blog or to visit it regularly.