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Dump WriterOverview |
Being able to capture a .DMP file is like being able to take a photograph of a crashed process at the moment in time that it crashed. For an experienced developer this can make the difference between being find and fix a bug in hours to it taking weeks of effort to reproduce the crash. For those with a Unix background a .DMP file is rather like a core dump file.
Since Windows XP, the API MiniDumpWriteDump has been available
as part of the OS, and as a redistributable in the form on DbgHelp.dll (since
about v5.1). While this API does the heavy lifting a bit more effort is
usually required on the part of the developer to integrate .DMP file capture
into an application. DumpWriter takes at least some of the effort out of this
integration.
Windows Error Reporting (WER IE only for this site) is part of Microsoft's WinQual program, and what's more it is free to sign up for. Do not be scared off by the fees for other parts of WinQual they do not apply to WER. However, WER is not for everyone, for starters you need to have a Verisign class 3 code signing certificate (about $500 per year), your applications may not have access to the Internet, and you may want more control over the amount of debug information gathered. WER is really cool and is suitable for most compiled applications with a large user base for which at least a good portion of users' machines are likely to have Internet connectivity, this covers most consumer level applications. If your company writes consumer level applications then you really ought to get signed up for WER and see what the benefits are. Indeed if your consumer level application is widely deployed then the WER web site most likely already has lots of .DMP files from your applications just waiting for you to signup and download them!
Dump writer is a free (as in no money and open source) tool to capture .DMP files. It takes a few lines of code to integrate with your application, and then you have a highly configurable means to capture .DMP files. Much of DumpWriter's emphasis is on being able to configure the way in which .DMP files are captured. This means control over the size of the files, where to store the files, the number of files to store, silent or interactive running, per application or per installation configuration.
