Handy Tools

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I'm still catching up on blog entries that I've been meaning to post, here are some
of the tools I mentioned in my TechEd New Zealand sessions.

FXCop

FxCop is a tool that lets you know whether you code conforms to specific
rules like naming guidelines, CLS compliance and much more.  Just point it to
your DLL and you'll get a list of issues with your code (You can check whether you
want to ignore certain errors). Download here.

ASP.NET Version Switcher

Have you ever actually tried to run ASP.NET applications that use different
versions of the .NET Framework 1.0, 1.1, and Whidbey?  This is totally
possible, but it can be a pain from a configuration perspective.  The issue is
that IIS requires file extensions to be mapped to a specific ISAPI extension, so to
have multiple virtual directories that use different versions of the framework, you
would have to manually change the file mapping configuration for each virtual directory.
(To do this go to IIS Manager, right click on a Virtual directory, select configuration...
and change the file mappings).  You can find more information about side-by-side
ASP.NET support on ASP.NET. 
I mentioned in my talk Dennis Bauer's (blog here) ASP.NET
Version Switcher that can automatically change versions for you.
Very cool and easy tool [picture]. 

Web Service Studio

If you find web services in uddi.org, xmethods.net or SalCentral (which
calls itself "The Napster of Web Services" ), you'll find Web Service Studio to be
the easiest way to inspect the service before you actually start writing code to it.
Download it here.

CLR Profiler

If you want to know how efficiently (or inefficiently) memory is being
used by your application, you need the CLR profiler.  Here's the link
to download it (its difficult to find on MSDN), and you can watch the .NET
Show with Gregor Noriskin who walks through using the tool here. 

NetPing and SnippetCompiler

Scott Hanselman who always has some awesome tools up his pocket, also recently mentioned
two tools by Jeff Key (blog here) NetPing and SnippetCompiler. 
I haven't tried the SnippetCompiler (yet) but NetPing is sweet [picture].