The Visual Basic Team : Performance

VB2008 Outperforms VB2005! (Lisa Feigenbaum)

VBTeam — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 19:08:00 GMT

Looking for another reason to upgrade to 2008? How about performance! In addition to making tasks easier for you from release to release, another way we can save you time and make you more productive is by making the product faster! This is a goal we are very commited to on the VB team, and for which we have dedicated an entire virtual team for the Orcas release. Take a look at the stats below to see some interesting improvements.

[**DISCLAIMER: The data posted here is what I have observed from comparing 2 runs in our internal labs. These are my observations using two large customer solutions on a specific machine. Some people will have faster systems and some will have slower. Also, the work required for each operation will differ based on your solution. Thus, your results may be better or worse. The interesting thing is to look at the improvement between versions on identical hardware. I am posting this data to try and give you a general idea of the changes - but these numbers are by no means meant to be used as an industry standard.

For those interested, here's some data on the solutions and machine that I used... One solution contains 29 projects and 2772 files, with xml comments on all methods and types. The other solution used contains 783 files. The machine has the following specs: Dual Core Pentium-D - 3.0GHz, 1GB RAM, 10K RPM HD. OS=XP. These are one of many machine specifications that we use for our internal performance testing.]

Scenario	VB2005 Time (ms)	VB2008 Time (ms)	VB2008 is x times faster than VB2005 (2005 time/ 2008 time)	VB2008 takes x% as much time as VB2005 (100% * 2008 time/ 2005 time)
Build a large project (using background compilation)	222206.25	1352.88	164.25	0.61%
Build a large multi-project solution (explicit build operation)	1618604.75	57542.75	28.13	3.56%
Build a large multi-project solution (using background compilation)	222925.50	19861.88	11.22	8.91%
Responsiveness after adding a member to a class	327.00	36.50	8.96	11.16%
Responsiveness after opening a project	255551.25	38769.38	6.59	15.17%
Invoke Intellisense to see a list of types (first time)	1192.50	530.5	2.25	44.49%
Edit-and-Continue in a solution with xml comments (first time)	441.25	210.5	2.10	47.71%
Responsiveness after changing a method statement	390.25	236.38	1.65	60.57%
10 Steps in the debugger (subsequent times)	1850.75	1167.13	1.59	63.06%
Invoke Intellisense to see a list of types (subsequent times)	79.25	51.5	1.54	64.98%
F5 when the solution is already built (subsequent times)	385.20	278.7	1.38	72.35%
Item gets added to the Error List after making an error	531.25	394.5	1.35	74.26%
10 Steps in the debugger (first time)	1336.50	1150	1.16	86.05%
Responsiveness while background compiling on an open solution	4803.00	4284.75	1.12	89.21%
Load a large solution (subsequent times)	13667.5	12407.25	1.10	90.78%
Load a large solution (first time) (Note: This is the improvement on XP. Vista has seen about twice as much improvement for the Load Solution scenario than XP. )	19946.25	18222	1.09	91.36%

** All times are found by performing operations on customer solutions. Don't you wish we were using your solution to optimize our times? Send it in so that we can optimize for you! (vbperf@microsoft.com) We are always interested to get more customer projects for our testing.

Is there another scenario you're interested that you don't see above, where you continue to experience performance lags in your regular usage of the product? Please send in repro steps so we can take a look! (vbperf@microsoft.com)

Other interesting VB2008 Performance content to check out is listed below:

In this Channel9 video, VB perf developer Cameron McColl talks about and demonstrates several of the VB perf improvements in Orcas: http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=328382#328382. Stepping, first-time intelliSense, errors in the task list, editor responsiveness, large solutions, and web apps are a few examples of areas where we have focused on improving performance in VB2008.
Cameron also demonstrates many of these improvements in his webcast linked here: http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam/archive/2007/07/24/today-s-performance-webcast-slide-deck-and-channel9-interview-beth-massi.aspx

Today's Performance Webcast Slide Deck and Channel9 Interview (Beth Massi)

VBTeam — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 03:30:00 GMT

The VB team thanks everyone who attended Cameron's webcast on Performance Improvements in Visual Studio 2008 this morning. If you missed it, you can click this link for the on-demand replay. I've attached his slides that he used in the webcast for your reference.

Also check out Cameron's Channel9 interview for more information (and if you're curious to see what he actually looks like!).

Enjoy!

-Beth Massi, VS Community

Visual Studio 2005 SP1 and Visual Basic 2005 Command-line Compiler (VBC.exe) Hotfix Released!

VBTeam — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 21:46:00 GMT

Visual Studio 2005 SP1 is now available for download. We’d like to thank everyone in the Visual Basic community for providing feedback on SP1 and helping us identify and address issues for this service pack. In some areas, more than 50% of the bugs addressed were reported by customers through the MSDN Product Feedback Center. Overall, SP1 offers customers improvements in responsiveness, stability and performance for Visual Basic 2005.

This service pack rolls up all of the Visual Basic 2005 hotfixes we’ve made to date and provides you the best overall performance and stability when developing in Visual Basic 2005.

We recommend VB developers install SP1. You can get SP1 at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/VS2005SP1

Service Pack 1 Update to Visual Basic 2005 Command-line Compiler (Vbc.exe)

This hotfix provides the SP1 improvements for the Visual Basic 2005 command line compiler, (vbc.exe).

After installing SP1, install this hotfix to development and deployed machines to get the SP1 fixes for vbc.exe if any of the following apply:

You are developing web sites with ASP.NET 2.0 in Visual Basic 2005
You are deploying ASP.NET 2.0 web sites written in Visual Basic 2005
You are building Visual Basic 2005 projects outside the IDE using VBC.exe

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=78807

Thanks for your contribution to Visual Studio 2005 SP1. We welcome your feedback on this release.

Chris Mayo

Visual Basic Program Manager

Key VB Hotfixes Available for Download

VBTeam — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 21:00:00 GMT

We’ve heard from you that popular hotfixes should be a public download rather than requiring a call to support.

Based your feedback, we’ve launched a pilot program that will allow you to download the most frequently requested Visual Basic 2005 hotfixes without having to contact Microsoft Developer Support. For more information about this pilot and a list of hotfixes that are available for download please visit the pilot home page.

The following Visual Basic 2005 hotfixes are available for download:

KB920805

Visual Basic

Compiler

FIX: (VB Compiler Hotfixes are cumulative)

You may receive Visual Basic compiler error messages when you are developing a Visual Basic 2005 project in Visual Studio 2005 (More Information)
You may experience performance issues when you use solutions that contain large Visual Basic projects in Visual Studio 2005 (More Information)
You may experience slow performance when you work with a Visual Basic solution that contains many projects in Visual Studio 2005 (More Information)

KB917036

Visual Basic

Deployment

FIX: The Visual Studio 2005 IDE may corrupt the deployment files for a Web Setup Project and for a Setup Project

More Information

Registration is required for download.

Let us know what you think of the program and the current list of fixes available. Your comments and feedback will help us shape this program.

Thanks,

Chris Mayo

Visual Basic Performance Program Manager