Code quality, customer feedback and application reliability with Windows Vista - Daniel Moth
Any developer that has been around for a while will confirm that there is no significant piece of software without "bugs". Given that undisputable statement, our aim as developers, is to find out about bugs, minimise the impact on the user and provide a fix as soon as possible. The Windows Feedback Platform WFP in Windows Vista is designed to help.
WFP is the next generation of
Windows Error Reporting (WER). It includes everything in WER today and adds some cool new capabilities.
At a high level overview, the way things work is this:
1. Your application is being used by the user
2. The application unexpectedly crashes, hangs or memory leaks (all detectable by Windows Vista)
3. The data relevant to this undesired situation is sent to a Microsoft developer portal:
Windows Quality Online Services (winqual)
4. You as the developer analyse the data
5. You fix the problem and supply details to winqual
6. The user is notified of the fix via the Problem Center in Windows Vista (more on this below)
A user can configure at installation time or via group policy whether or not they want to take part in error reporting and an application developer also has the choice to opt out. If the application and the user are opted in to error reporting then error reports will be submitted to winqual whenever an internet connection becomes available.
The new Windows Vista Problem Center shows the history of problems encountered over time, error reports submitted and provides access to solutions where available.
To gather data for your application(s) you must visit winqual. The site has undergone a number of improvements including improved file mapping, new reports/lists/metrics, response stats and issue notifications. Remember that to access winqual you have to register an account for your company. Contrary to some beliefs, this is completely 100% free, which makes it a no-brainer (you must have a verisign certificate but that is the only hurdle).
Having said all that, as a developer, what excites me more personally about the whole story are the new APIs in Windows Vista. There are new APIs for
adding files to the report sent to winqual, as well as memory blocks and performing other
configurations to the report. There are also the restart and recovery APIs which combined with the WFP offer a very compelling story. By making a
single API call, your application will restart after it crashes and after the report is sent, thus allowing the user to continue working. By making an
additional API call that lets Windows Vista know which function to call just before restarting your application, you are given an opportunity to save some recovery data. Incidentally, these
restart and recovery APIs is what the new
Restart Manager is based on.
Probably the biggest users of WFP are the Microsoft applications and the Operating System itself and the capabilities are enabling Microsoft to get a tight feedback loop and build better products. Take advantage of this yourself by registering with winqual today and by using the aforementioned APIs from your applications!
