Epitomy uses profiler to optimize online auto catalog

Epitomy, a provider of data management services, thought it had some very cool code to manage pop-ups for an online catalog of auto parts.

That was before the company's software developers ran it through ANTS Performance Profiler, a simple tool from Red Gate Software that identifies slow code for .NET applications.

"ANTS Performance Profiler showed that our 'very cool' code was slow," says Andrew Vernon, Epitomy's director. "We decided to use a less-elegant alternative that boosted performance."

Epitomy, based in Sheffield, England, is seeking to redefine the way capital goods manufacturers communicate with their sales and service networks. The company worked with Lex Auto Logistics, the U.K.'s leading service provider of after-sales logistics for the automotive industry, to create LEXtec, the first web-based automotive parts catalog. The site has been operating successfully for the past year, and Lex Auto Logistics and Epitomy are working on a new module scheduled to go live this spring.

LEXtec is an ASP.NET application that uses SQL Server to store the data required to display approximately 1 million parts. Beyond its transactional value, the site gives Lex Auto Logistics a major marketing advantage by placing the company at the forefront of parts sales and service technology.

ANTS aids performance

ANTS Performance Profiler is helping them dig deeper into the application's code as they work on a new module.

"We believe the 80/20 principle is particularly applicable to ANTS Performance Profiler," says Andrew Vernon, Epitomy's director. "It quickly highlights the top 10 problem areas in terms of speed, and once fixed, they account for 80 percent of the available performance boost from the code."

In addition to identifying slow code, ANTS Performance Profiler helps Epitomy single out simple mistakes that are often difficult to find, such as cutting and pasting errors. In the LEXtec application, for example, a resource-intensive line of code was accidentally duplicated.

"If we'd had to insert debug lines it would have taken 100 times longer to track down the problem," says Vernon. "Since it was a mistake, it was quickly highlighted by ANTS Performance Profiler."

Optimized code in a quarter of the time

Vernon and the Epitomy software developers say that ANTS Performance Profiler enabled them to debug and optimize the LEXtec application in about one-quarter of the time it would have taken otherwise.

With principal debugging and optimization completed, Epitomy is doing final testing of the new LEXtec module. Epitomy also has a number of other projects for which it plans to use ANTS Performance Profiler.

"ANTS Performance Profiler is an important tool for .NET developers to have during development and testing." says Vernon. "We wouldn't want to do without it."