VS Law .NET Workstation

Screen Shot | Key Features

Automated Code Review Add-In

The VS Law .NET Workstation Add-In automates code reviews for Visual Basic .NET projects within the Visual Studio .NET 2002/2003 IDE. The code review results database for each project is presented within a dockable window known as the VS Law workbench.

From the workbench, developers can view code review results including review summary information, a list of coding violations and a variety of project source code statistics and metrics.

Using powerful grid functions, the information displayed can easily be grouped, sorted and prioritised. Developers can also drill-down through information with the ability to jump to the appropriate line of code within the IDE.

Q: Not got time for code reviews?
A: VS Law automation can help!

With VS Law .NET automated code reviews:

Reviews are objective and impartial.

Problems and mistakes can be identified early in the development life cycle.

Reviews can be performed rapidly and frequently.

Expensive resources need not be assembled so often to review code.

Developers need not be so selective about which code gets reviewed.

Reviews can be performed by any developer regardless of experience level.

Assists developers new to .NET programming with guidance on best practices.

Violations are logged automatically as they are identified.

Violations can be grouped, sorted and prioritised by rule, file, procedure, impact or severity.

Reviews can easily be repeated to verify corrections have been implemented successfully.

The VS Law .NET Workstation Add-In permits developers to perform automated code reviews directly within the Visual Studio .NET 2002/2003 IDE. Using VS Law, code can be reviewed early in and throughout the development life cycle. Identification of problems early in the development process accelerates delivery and reduces development costs.

Note: Whilst VS Law is not intended as a total replacement for peer code reviews or testing, VS Law automated code reviews can offer significant benefits to organisations with insufficient resource or time to conduct peer code reviews frequently and effectively leaving developers more time for other tasks.

Key Features

Automate code reviews within the IDE.

Perform rapid, frequent, impartial reviews of Visual Basic .NET source code. Powerful, object-oriented parser analyses source code and compiled assemblies for even the largest projects. Review currently open Visual Basic .NET projects within the Visual Studio .NET 2002/2003 IDE. Identify and avoid problems early in the development life cycle. Detect problems relating to known issues with Visual Basic. Determine a "pass" or "fail" verdict for projects based on rulebase tolerances.

Enforce Visual Basic coding standards effectively.

Quickly obtain an accurate measure of coding standards compliance for your Visual Basic source code at any stage of the development life cycle. Enforce coding and naming conventions. Enforce software architecture design goals. Enforce GUI standards. Prevent use of unauthorised keywords.

Increase developer productivity.

Reduce learning curves for developers new to .NET programming. Obtain best practice advice for .NET programming. Reduce learning curves for use of your organisation's coding standards. Identify and correct coding standards violations without leaving the Visual Studio IDE. Navigate quickly to errant code. Prioritise violation corrections by rule, category, impact or severity. Determine useful source statistics whilst editing code. Achieve a "correct first time" approach to coding.

Reduce maintenance and future development costs.

Improve readability and understanding of source code by enforcement of consistent coding style and naming conventions. Improve source code quality and maintainability. Target maintenance and testing effort more effectively.

Gather and analyse valuable Visual Basic source code statistics.

Determine source code member make-up, code-comment ratios and line count statistics. Drill-down by project and source file to procedures. Show levels of improvement, or increased violations in source code over time. Identify "problem" areas of code. List and assess violations by source file, rule title, severity, category, convention type, impact or frequency.

Compute McCabe cyclomatic complexity for Visual Basic code.

Compute McCabe cyclomatic complexity metrics for procedures. Identify complex areas of code and assess ease of understanding and modification risk. Use complexity metrics to size and target unit testing effort.

Download and try VS Law Workstation for free for 30 days.