Once the installation of Sonar is complete, you are ready to launch analyses on your projects.

What does Sonar analyze?

Sonar performs a static analysis of your code.

Sonar analyzes 15+ languages. The code that is analyzed may be:

• Source code (.java files in Java, Cobol programs, etc.)
• Compiled code (.class files or jars in Java, dll files in C#, etc.)

By analyzing your code, the Sonar engine:

• Computes measures (lines of code, cyclomatic complexity, etc.) at different levels (file, module, project, application portfolio, etc.)
• Detects violations (non-respects of coding standards)

For some languages (like Java or C# for example), Sonar can also provide information on automated unit and integration tests like number of failing tests, code coverage, etc.

How to launch an analysis?

For a project embedding different languages, each of them needs to be analyzed by running its own Sonar analysis. The the results can be aggregated at project level, using the Views plug-in.

There are several ways Sonar analysis can be performed:

• using the Maven Plugin
• using the Ant Task
• using the Java Runner
• using a CI engine

A series of advanced parameters is available when running analysis.