Make your code shine!

Now you can. Project Analyzer is a complete code review and quality control tool for Visual Basic. With Project Analyzer's problem detection feature, you remove dead code, get recommendations for better coding style, and check for error prone places in your project.

Smaller and faster code with less errors. Interested? Wait - there is more. Project Analyzer makes it faster to get control of your colleagues' projects. Its unique features let you browse through code as hypertext or graphical call trees.

For fine-tuning and monitoring software development, Project Analyzer provides industry standard quality control metrics. Naturally, Project Analyzer also documents your projects with cross-references and other useful data.

Improvements in v7

• DLL file analysis. Analyze the contents of conventional DLLs. View recommended declaration syntax of Win API calls. (Enterprise Edition)
• Detect dead controls in VB 3-6 projects. Remove controls that are invisible, disabled or outside the visible form area.
• Detect dead classes, modules, structures, interfaces and discarded function return values. Also find semi-dead code such as classes that are never instantiated or interfaces that are not implemented.
• Find duplicate code. Detect repeated lines that frequently result from copy & paste coding. Save space and facilitate maintenance efforts by eliminating duplicate blocks. (Enterprise Edition)
• String literal analysis. Detect and join repeated strings to save space and centralize string definitions. Estimate string data size in executable.
• Prevent resource leaks by requiring destroy/release calls on Win API resource handles.
• Enforce class design rules. Find subtle faults in class declarations. Special rule sets for .NET: Enforce practices on instantiation and destruction. Detect inheritance, scope and naming issues.
• Enhanced style and optimization rules. Constant without type specification, Constant with obsolete type character, Parameter with generic type, Case Else missing, Dim/Const found in code, Base address unoptimal, Compilation unoptimized.
• Project Metrics: Total metrics rewrite. New metrics such as comment density, logical and physical lines, deadness index, length of names, decision and call density, total and relative complexity, class hierarchy metrics, MOOD metrics, Chidamber & Kemerer OO metrics, class interface size, lines in call tree... Store metrics in a database and view historical development. Compare projects. View charts and detect out-of-bounds values. Project Metrics help (Enterprise Edition)
• New reports. File lists, Module list, Namespace list, Procedure lists, Form report, Dead procedures report.
• Report to .csv file and import analysis results to Excel.
• Syntax-highlighted copy to Clipboard. Paste color-coded source to your documentation.
• Updated VB.NET Compatibility Check for version 2003.

Project Analyzer

• Support for VB.NET. Project Analyzer v6 supports all Visual Basic versions from 3.0 to 6.0, and VB.NET. No matter which VB version you use, you can optimize and document your code with a single tool.
• Multi-project analysis. Analyze .vbg or .sln files, or any projects that call each other. Analyze the use of COM files in VB projects. Feature requires Enterprise Edition.
• Detection of exposed dead code. Best combined with multi-project analysis, this feature finds dead code in public classes that are exposed to other projects, but not used by any of them.
• Detailed cross-references are available for any piece of code by right-clicking it in the hypertext view. You can also get a list of all references between 2 files to see how they depend on each other.
• Enhanced reports. Module diagrams, Interface report, File list, Design quality report, Summary report, Dictionary report, Problem report, Needs report, Cross-reference report.
• New report interface. The usability of the reports has been enhanced, with the ability print reports from the preview display, or save them in a .rtf or a .pdf file.
• Enhanced source code documents are available in the Project Printer add-in. Generate good-looking docs including all of your source code or comments in code. Write specially formatted comments, or utilize existing comments as they are written. Multi-color syntax enhanced source code printing is now possible too.
• Enhanced code web site. Generate a new, better looking code web site with the Project Printer add-in. Optionally compile the web site into a single .chm help file for easy browsing of your code.
• Memory leak prevention by enforcing explicit clearing rules for object variables and dynamic arrays. (v6.2)
• New problem detection rules, including Empty module, Event not raised, Missing default/cancel button, Global variable found, Fixed-length string used, Object variable declared As New, Unicode function AscW/ChrW is faster, Constant available for certain unnecessary function calls, For..Next final value unoptimal, Consider short-circuited logic. (v6.2)
• New optimization rules for VB.NET, including Option Strict missing, On Error style used, Multi-dimensional array found, Microsoft.VisualBasic imported, Seal class/method for less overhead, WithEvents adds overhead, Use compound operator += etc., CType slower than DirectCast. (v6.2)
• File dependency analysis finds circular file dependencies that have a negative effect on code reuse. (v6.2)
• Executed by report lists the actions, such as events, that cause a procedure to execute.
• Enhanced Find feature. Search for variables, constants, types and enums. Search for any string in your project. Search for any piece of real code, excluding comments and string literals.
• Project Graph has new ways to include the graphs in your documents: copy to clipboard or save as picture file. Printer settings enhanced. Project Graph supports larger graphs than before, and enhances two-way links so you can quickly spot problematic code. New Project Graph types:
  • Class inheritance tree visualizes the Implements and Inherits statements.
  • Control flow tree shows how procedure execution flows between modules.
  • Data flow tree shows how data flows between modules via variable read/write and parameter passing.
  • Form show tree visualizes the order in which forms show each other.
  • Project dependency graph describes a large system consisting of several projects.
• Improved analysis. A major rewrite in the analysis engine yields more reliable and accurate results than ever before. Support for new coding constructs added, as well as better support for object-oriented analysis. Even the notorious late-bound calls are detected, resulting in the best possible analysis results even if the type object variables is not know at design-time.
• Easier working! A great number of small user interface improvements make it easier to work with Project Analyzer. To name one, you can now edit your code in VB and keep Project Analyzer open without any negative effects.

Key features

• Dead code detection. Remove unused procedures, variables, constants etc. Decrease your .exe by up to 100s of kB. More
• Optimization. Find inefficient code. Avoid memory leaks. View suggestions for better syntax.
• Style. Enforce programming standards and make that spaghetti code readable again.
• Functionality. Detect run-time issues, such as form resizing, error handling and tab orders.

Hypertext code view. Surf around code with your mouse.

Document your project. Get cross-reference reports, call trees, source code manuals etc. Find out where procedures are being called from and where a variable gets its value.

Library report. What dll's and ocx's does your project really use?

Metrics. Estimate the quality of your code with metrics such as logical lines of code, cyclomatic complexity, depth of conditional nesting, comment to code ratio, length of names etc. Some metrics features require the Enterprise Edition.

Available editions

Pro Edition offers everything the Standard Edition has, plus all the add-ins.

Enterprise Edition includes everything that's in the Pro Edition, plus advanced functionality. It removes or comments out dead code, and fixes a number of coding problems automatically. It analyzes several projects at the same time, as well as COM files. It also checks for .NET compatibility.

Add-ins

• Project Printer puts source code on paper or in document files. Turn your code into HTML or CHM. Generate code manuals out of comments in code.
• Super Project Analyzer combines several analyses into one to detect dead code. Useful for projects that share some source code files.
• Project Graph builds graphical call trees and dependency trees.
• Project NameCheck enforces standard naming conventions on variables, procedures, controls etc.

Editions

Pro Edition offers everything that the Standard Edition has and includes all the add-ins. The Pro Edition has all the necessary features for project documentation and naming standards enforcement. It's suitable for developers working in a project where documentation and programming standards are important.

Enterprise Edition includes everything that's in the Pro Edition plus a lot of advanced features. It removes or comments out dead code and fixes a number of coding problems automatically. It analyzes several projects at the same time, including .vbg and .sln files. It supports COM and DLL file analysis to view their contents and use in VB code. It checks for .NET compatibility, provides very advanced metrics features and points out duplicate code blocks. It even includes a macro language. The Enterprise Edition is ideal for programming teams and departments with a large number of projects, or projects that are large in size. It's designed for organizations who need to achieve top quality with their coding process.