AQTime Pro Falters

Delphi’s second last TDS-based profiler fades away.

On AQTime’s support page I see:

Support for AQTime will officially end on June 30, 2024. After that date, you can continue using AQTime, but there will be no further updates, bug fixes, or technical assistance provided for AQTime.

Additionally, AQTime will be sunset on June 30, 2026. After this date, you will no longer be able to access AQTime.

A brief history of AQTime

SmartBear was formerly known as AutomatedQA, Inc. Years later, they pursued the web-based testing market.

Embarcadero’s products atrophied. Their horde-mentality caused ruin and famine to both developers and vendors.

Delphi-based products failed

AutomatedQA had a string of Delphi failures. Their CI/CD product, Automated Build Studio “ABS”, made using Delphi, was discontinued.

AQDock VCL was discontinued soon after, with promises to open-source the VCL. This did not happen, leaving docking in Delphi to be a horrid mess.¹

There were several docking solutions in QT/CLX in Kylix during the good old Delphi 7 era. They were soon discontinued. QT evolved from the red-haired spunk to having several cross-platform docking solutions, the most prominent being KDDockingWidgets and Qt-Advanced-Docking-Solution.

If you’re purchasing Delphi Enterprise, you only get a command-line solution, and a crippled “Embarcadero license” of FML, FireMonkey for Linux. Are there any good toolbar and docking solutions for FMX?

AQTime falters

Why did AQTime fail? There are several profiler options for C/C++. 

AQTime works via reading the TDS file. A TDS file is a Turbo-Debugger Symbol file, a reminant of the old Turbo Pascal days. The TDS file is the equivalent of a PDB file.

Years ago, Borland Pascal (the Pro version of TurboPascal) came with TurboDebugger, TurboProfiler… Although TurboDebugger and TurboProfiler is not shipped, there are apps which read the TDS file and get the symbol data from Delphi-based, C++ Builder-based EXEs and DLLs.

Instead of shipping a profiler, now 3rd-party vendors would supply a profiler and memory-leak checker, freeing Borland from having to ship one.

Instead of innovating, Borland created a “bubble” where Delphi would stay stagnant, and the whole world moved on.

AQTime could not profile parallel SSE2, SSE3, SSE4 AVX256, AVX512 code-blocks, leading to unknown profiling-timer results for those code-blocks, nor does it profile Intel C++ compilers, GCC or Clang-based compilers².

AQTime is not compatible with Delphi 11, 64-bit EXEs due to changes in the 64-bit MAP file Delphi generates. There’s an unanswered post on AQTime forums³.

AQTime does not support C++ Builder’s 12.1 new Modern Compiler, nor its new symbol files.

AQTime wasn’t fully protected. There are solutions for “medicine”

Photocredit: found in a certain forum. Solution is redacted.

AutomatedQA hired employees who slandered and defamed their customers on the former Borland’s newsgroups.

Imagine buying AQTime, and… previously slandered and defamed by their employees. I wouldn’t buy AQTime ever again.

Good laws make good neighbors

The only profiler left standing is… NexusDB QA Suite “NQS”. This is a TDS-based profiler. There is nothing to say about NexusDB QA Suite, except it works well, and something I can post to recommend as a replacement for AQTime.

NexusQA Pty Ltd. is based in Australia, where libel laws means, problem customers are dealt with severely. Either you tell a valid issue, or, as in their web-pages… “will be instantly transported to interstellar space, without a suit.”⁴

NexusQA won’t revoke your usage rights if you decide not to renew your license. Something to consider, since on June 30, 2026. After this date, you will no longer be able to access AQTime.

Other Delphi Profilers

There’s the Delphi Sampling Profiler, which works for what it does, upto Delphi XE4.

There are other profilers out there. I don’t know if they requires TDS files or external debug file to be generated.

Make sure you know what you’re getting into, as, it’s not the fault of your coding.

1. https://www.zuggsoft.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=95399

2. https://support.smartbear.com/aqtime/docs/general-info/supported-dev-tools.html

3. https://community.smartbear.com/discussions/aqtime/aqtime-delphi-11-x-support/233640

4. https://www.nexusdb.com/support/index.php?q=node/10019