1. Understand 2.0 Engineer
2. Understand 2.0 Pro
3. Understand 2.0 Analyst
4. Understand 2.0 Non-Commercial

So which is right for you?

Our goal for 2.0 was to make a tool that is a “must have” if you are maintaining code (and who isn’t??). 

Assuming you have had TrackBack B443 or later monitoring your source trees, you can recreate the state of any monitored directory at any time. This includes file modification, file existance, file renaming, everything.

In both 1.4 and 2.0 the usual way of exploring/learning about code in the editor is via the Right Click context menu. For instance, if I want to learn about allocstrAppend() I right click on it:

To see the options, just start Understand with “-help”:

%understand -help

]]> http://scitools.com/blog/2008/07/documentation-understand-20-gu.html http://scitools.com/blog/2008/07/documentation-understand-20-gu.html Documentation Understand 2.0 command+line documentation integration Understand+2.0 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:23:05 -0700

I’ve just realized that while I’ve written a bunch of posts referring to snapshots and using snapshots, I’ve never explained what they are and how they can fit into a software engineer’s workflow. Hence the “missing piece of the puzzle” clip art above.

Q: What are snapshots?

A: A snapshot is a binary store included within an Understand database. A database can hold be any number of snapshots. Each contains three things:

1. a complete Understand database containing analysis (parse) information
2. all source, including any include files, needed to rebuild that analysis
3. certain cached information used to speed up working with them (metrics and file information)

Q: What are snapshots used for?

A: They are used throughout Understand 2.0 to provide details and metrics about what has changed in source code between two points of time.  The “Change”, “Metrics”, and “Estimate” menus all use snapshots intensively.

“Change” will tell you what has changed at the semantic level. For instance, what classes or types changed, versus just what files/lines changed.

“Metrics” can tell you the number of semantic changes – classes removed, changed, added, so forth.

]]> http://scitools.com/blog/2008/07/faq-snapshots-what-are-they-an.html http://scitools.com/blog/2008/07/faq-snapshots-what-are-they-an.html Documentation Understand 2.0 documentation FAQ Snapshots Understand+2.0 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:22:35 -0700 A frequent complaint of Understand 1.4 users was that unless their project was syncronized to an MSVC project it was difficult to keep Understand projects up to date about new files and especially hard to keep files removed from a project from showing up again when adding new code.

Understand 2.0 addresses this with the “Watched Dir” concept. By default any directory you add is a “watched dir”.

Understand 2.0 scans all project “watched dir” for new/removed files and the project file list updated automatically.  Importantly, any modifications you have manually made – either by removing or by changing file filters is remembered.  In 2.0 you only have to remove a file once it won’t come back unless you add it specifically.

You can trigger a rescan  with the Project->Rescan button:

Or automatically on a schedule with the Project scheduler available in Project->Configure Project:

A new way in Understand 2.0 is the Entity Explorer window.  It permits keyboard based fast exploring of reference hiearchies with syncronized source and informatoin updates.

To see this just click on any entity that has relationships. For instance, a function, and choose “Explorer”.  It will list the reference hiearchies availble to explore:

B453, which you can download now,  introduces a new “incremental search” feature to the Information Browser that makes answering questions like that a snap.

To use it hit select where you want to start searching from and then hit the Ctrl-F key while in the IB or click on the  icon.

That brings up a search box on the bottom of the IB:

The metrics capabilities vary depending on what version of Understand you are using: Understand Engineer provides high level project metrics, Understand Pro lets you explore and export project and entity level metrics, and Understand Analyst lets you do all that, create custom graphs, and even compare how metrics are changing over time (trend analysis). 

All of this Metrics capability is accessed through the new Metrics menu.

Engineer	Pro	Analyst

I have a couple options:

1. Check out B450 source to an alternate location and make a snapshot from it.
2. Look up the revision tag time for B450 and use TrackBack to make a snapshot.

I’ll choose #1 just for an example. Next time, I’ll show #2.

First, I’ll check my SVN e-mail log to see when B450 was tagged:

]]> http://scitools.com/blog/2008/07/tip-making-a-snapshot-from-an.html http://scitools.com/blog/2008/07/tip-making-a-snapshot-from-an.html Tips Understand 2.0 alternate+location Change snapshot snapshots Thu, 10 Jul 2008 06:04:24 -0700 Historically we have always had a very small percentage of our revenue as services. As our customer base has grown (over 4,000 customer sites as of last month), requests for customizations, training, new reports, new metrics, new analysis features have increased to the point where we need to have an organized way of responding.

Towards that end we’ve created a Professional Services group within Scitools. Currently it is a Lead Engineer (Rob Shurtliff – a senior engineer with a number of years experience providing professional services) and three other engineers. We can matrix a variety of other engineers with special skills through the group as well.

So what can the new Scitools PSG do for you?

http://www.scitools.com/products/proservices.php

has the details.  But in short, anything related to improving your benefit from using our tools. That could include training, special scripts, new metrics, adding an assembler or other language, helping you create architectures, a multi-site metrics collection system. Whatever you need that depends on our technology.

Our new Scitools PSG works in these ways:

•  fixed price deliverable – we agree on a deliverable. You pay when we deliver and you are happy.
•  on going hourly  – this is for ongoing work; a budget or contract is set, we bill against it.
•  retainer – the group sells 40, 80 and 200 hour retainers. There are also product bundles that include licenses and service hours. When you have a need they tell you the hours required and after your e-mailed approval they proceed.

If you have something in mind e-mail our support@scitools.com folks.

I hope you like it. If you notice anything bogus, please e-mail.

I urge you to back up your Understand 2.0 databases regularly, especially if you are using any of the above features. A simple copy will do, and the copied database will compress.

In B450 we have introduced a Project Scheduler. It  can be used to automatically update project files, project parses and build snapshots. In the the next build or two we will add Understand database back up to this scheduler.  Longer term we plan to also have reports, metrics updates and script/script set runs scheduled as well.