With the launch of Visual Studio 2010 and Silverlight 4 at the DevConnections show in Las Vegas last week, I am pleased to announce that Dotfuscator CE version 5 is now generally available. With an all-new user interface, more intelligent obfuscation, and application analytics instrumentation, this promises to be the biggest change we’ve made to Dotfuscator CE in its history. I am particularly excited because soon, with the application analytics included in Dotfuscator CE, millions of developers world-wide will have the opportunity to see real usage data coming in from their applications. Even better, they will be able to do so completely cost-free.
I was invited to act as part of PreEmptive’s delegation to the launch event and humbled to speak with so many passionate developers, architects, DBAs, and yes – even managers. What I did not initially expect was the overwhelmingly positive response from nearly everyone we talked with. Most people had never heard of application analytics. But, with a brief introduction everyone quickly understood the idea and many offered up scenarios where they would want to use it for their applications (completely unsolicited, I might add). It was thrilling to receive such a positive response to something I - and the other fantastic developers here at PreEmptive - have worked very hard over the past few years to create.
I very much encourage the great folks I met in Las Vegas last week, along with millions of passionate developers across the globe, to open up Dotfuscator CE and try out the free analytics we’ve included. Today, most web developers wouldn’t think of publishing a web site without including web analytics. I hope that having these analytics included with Visual Studio 2010 will lead to application developers thinking the same way about their applications. Of course, using the two together in a Silverlight or ASP.NET application to get a complete view of the visitor’s experience is a natural fit. But application analytics extends far beyond that. Now, all .NET developers are able to get live information that can help steer development focus, even in areas that were previously completely opaque – from cloud apps running on Windows Azure to mobile phone applications on Windows Phone 7 and even to applications running on Linux and Mac with Mono.
In fact, I look forward to seeing how application analytics will be used to support open source development throughout the .NET ecosystem. Because open source developers essentially donate their spare time, being able to focus their efforts in places that have the most user impact is crucial. An open source development model also allows far greater flexibility for developers to immediately shift their focus to match what their users are actually doing with the software they produce, without the constraints of rigid development and deployment practices. Because of these factors, I specifically encourage maintainers of open source projects to try the free application analytics provided in Dotfuscator CE. Together with the bug reports and feature requests you already have, you will be able to truly make the most of the precious time that your contributors give.
Some might say that it’s counterintuitive for a company known for source code obfuscation to support open source development, but at PreEmptive our guiding principle is simply “help software succeed”. With application analytics, we have the opportunity to extend our dedication to this principle beyond proprietary software. In the past few months, we’ve released numerous projects on CodePlex including some awesome editor extensions that integrate application analytics right into the Visual Studio 2010 IDE, an endpoint starter kit so you can write your own backend to receive and process Runtime Intelligence messages, a data visualizer sample to demonstrate how to consume analytics data using our RESTful analytics API, and an API helper library to make using our API even easier. And our new partnership with CodePlex, which will provide free application analytics for hosted projects surfaced right within each project’s page, provides us yet another great opportunity to help software succeed.
Tags: Analytics, application analytics, ASP.NET, Azure, CodePlex, DevConnections, Dotfuscator, free, instrumentation, Linux, Mac, Mono, Obfuscation, open source, PreEmptive, Runtime Intelligence, Silverlight, Silverlight Analytics, Vegas, Visual Studio, Windows Phone
I run a problem when using Dotfuscator CE 5.0.2300, which was installed along with VS2010 RTM.
It worked fine before, until a power cut happened when the dotfucator was running. When the power restored, I can’t launch the dotfuscator.exe anymore. Double clicking the dotfuscator.exe, nothing happen, there is no message. Tring launch it from VS2010 doesn’t help.
I uninstalled the Dotfuscator and installed it, or even uninstalled the VS2010 and re-install, no improvement.
Anyone has any idea why this happens? What should I do then? I’ve spent 5 hours on this problem.
I recommend you uninstall Dotfuscator CE, and then delete the folder C:\Users\<your user>\AppData\Local\PreEmptive Solutions\Dotfuscator Community Edition (for Vista / Win7) or C:\Documents and Settings\<your user>\Local Settings\Application Data\PreEmptive Solutions\Dotfuscator Community Edition (for Windows XP). Once this is done, you can safely re-install Dotfuscator CE.
If this does not get you going, please open a thread on our forums at http://www.preemptive.com/forum/
I think the product has great potential, and the CodePlex/PreEmptive partnership could become a great story. However, for that to happen for anything other than the simplest of projects, a couple of things would need to happen:
- Serious open source projects use some kind of automated build, which will not work with PreEmptive because the MSBuild task is only available for Pro licenses.
- The attributes that are required in the source code (unless someone would ever want to edit those values in the UI every time the software is to be released) depend on a PreEmptive-owned DLL that cannot be redistributed. As such, the Open Source project owner cannot upload the DLL to the project source code repository.
These two situations will make the proposition a deal breaker, which is a shame, considering the benefit that Open Source projects could reap with little effort (I have completed that effort for Scrum Sprint Monitor, but now I have my hands tied with this situation).
Best regards,
Pedro
Hi Pedro,
Thanks for your insightful comments. I’m glad to hear that you found Runtime Intelligence as easy to use as we like to think it is :) I’ve forwarded your comments to some people who I hope will be able to do something about them. You can of course do instrumentation without referencing the PreEmptive.Attributes.dll by defining your attributes in Dotfuscator’s UI (where they will be saved in your config file, which can be stored in your project’s source control repo). Obviously this is not ideal in some situations - going forward I am looking to see the code to our Attributes DLL released under a GPL-compatible license (I personally cannot see a reason not to, as it’s simply a bunch of attribute definitions). As far as build integration, I cannot predict where we will go with that. I’d personally like to see at least command-line support added to CE, but the powers that be certainly see build integration as a motivator for Dotfuscator Pro purchases. We as a company are committed to open source, and I have been and will continue to make sure that open source developers have the tools they need, cost-free and under compatible licensing, in order to help their software succeed.
Hi Brandon,
Thanks for your candid reply. I think your suggestion of using Dotfuscator’s UI to store the attribute preferences could work, although it is not ideal, at least for me. I like being able to do a Find in Sources in my code for all currently defined Features. In the long run, the GPL approach seems to be the best way to go.
Regarding MSBuild integration, I can certainly see its value for Pro licenses, and I’m definitely not advocating that this should be made available in CE. Instead, PreEmptive Solutions could take applications from Open Source projects in order to supply them with some sort of free license that would give that kind of support.
Just my two cents.
Thanks,
Pedro
Nice one Google!Nokia’s WRT platform for s60v5 ivedces uses html, css and javascript in a chromless browser. Apps are really one big html file that hides/unhides sections as required.Would Analytics for Mobile work easily on the WRT platform? Is there a workaround to get Analytics to work without waiting for an SDK plugin?If not, and given that WRT is html-ready, would it be possible to use regular Google Analytics instead? Are there any issues to watch out for?
Pedro,
To follow up, PreEmptive has officially stated that the PreEmptive.Attributes.dll library may be freely distributed with application source code see: http://preemptive.com/blog/archives/162 . In addition, we are providing a version of that assembly that can be included in pre-.NET 4.0 projects here: http://runtimeintelligence.codeplex.com/releases .
We understand the additional friction involved in there being no automated build solution available for open source and community projects and are currently working on ways that we can help with that as well. Keep an eye on this blog as we’ll certainly continue to talk about it here.
Thank you for your feedback.