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Microsoft Message Analyzer Beta 3 is released

Microsoft Message Analyzer is the successor of Microsoft Network Monitor. Microsoft released their third and final Beta of Microsoft Message Analyzer which will be followed up by the official release in the fall.

In addition to the new features and functionality, they improved performance and reduced the memory footprint. Here is a list of the new features highlights.

Centralized Sharing Infrastructure — users can now utilize the new Message Analyzer sharing infrastructure to create Library items as shareable assets that that you can import, export and share with others. Manageable asset types include Trace Scenarios, Filters, Viewpoints, Color Rules, Column Layouts, and Sequence Expressions.
User Libraries — Above assets are available under centralized User Libraries
Home tab — includes new Ribbon reorganization and enhancements that include the following features:

Viewpoints — specify preset viewpoints so you can view data from the perspective of a protocol, in addition to hiding operations in the current view and resetting the default viewpoint.

Time Shifts — specify time shifts that adjust for machine skew or time zone changes across traces.

Chart tab — enables you to create, edit, save, and share your own Composite Chart viewers that can contain custom-configured pie, bar, timeline, and grid chart components, similar to the built-in Protocol Dashboard.

Session Status — includes a new progress bar indicator in Session Explorer for loading, capturing, filtering, sorting, finding, and grouping data, in addition to applying sequence matching. Also displays the number of messages in a session and the number of messages in a session after Viewpoints or View Filters are applied.

Tool Windows — the following new tools are now available:
Diagnostics window — summarizes diagnosis errors in a session and enables you to easily jump to a corresponding diagnosis message in the Analysis Grid. You can also filter Diagnostics window columns to isolate specific column data.

Call Stack tool window — displays the message stack for any selected message row in the Analysis Grid.

Bookmarks window — an annotation window that enables you to mark one or more messages of interest, which includes adding links, attachments, and different colored flags.

Comments window — an annotation window that enables you to quickly add basic comments to one or more messages.

Server Response Time — a new Global Annotation entity from Column Chooser that you can add as a data column in the Analysis Grid viewer, to measure the time interval between a request operation to a server and the first server response. Provides a context for assessing server performance.

Hyper-V Switch trace capability — capture traffic from individual VMs on a host by tying into the local Hyper-V switch.

Sequence Expression Editor — develop and save sequence expressions based on message traffic that you have captured. You can also manage sequence expressions as assets that you can share with your colleagues.
Filtering Language enhancements — the Filtering Language has been extended to include support for IP sub-netting and DateTime literal expressions.

OPN behavior scenario extensions — support has been added for using an Xpath-like notation when creating OPN sequence expressions, to enable you to specify constraints on message origins. In addition, support is now included for arbitrary expressions (including annotations) in reference patterns.

Centralized Field Chooser — a new feature that extends the Column Chooser so that it is available to other tools that require you to choose fields, for example, when configuring a Sequence Expression.

Looking for this? You find it at https://connect.microsoft.com/directory/ by logging into your account and searching for it. Join the beta program and happy testing.

For more info: http://blogs.technet.com/b/messageanalyzer/archive/2013/06/21/microsoft-message-analyzer-beta-3-released.aspx