Case Study: Borland achieves faster debugging and improved Delphi 2006 performance with SmartBear AQtime

Borland Uses AQtime to Tune Complex Software Product

Borland, a global leader in platform-independent application lifecycle management, faced quality and performance challenges with Delphi 2006 as the product grew more complex. A particularly elusive bug prevented users on some systems from rearranging items in the tool palette: because the IDE used OLE drag-and-drop callbacks, traditional debugging was ineffective (breakpoints canceled the drag), so the team couldn’t easily find where expected code paths were failing.

Using the AQtime profiler, Borland captured “good” and “bad” runs of the drag-and-drop operation, compared call stacks and method calls, and quickly identified which functions weren’t being invoked and where execution paths diverged. That insight enabled targeted breakpoints, a fast fix for the bug, and broader performance optimizations across Delphi 2006; AQtime’s static call stacks and managed/unmanaged visibility made the process far faster and more reliable.

Borland

Mark Edington

Principal Engineer