Creating Traces for Developer Studio

By Dimitris Poulos

Just like the other components that make up or are used by WebFOCUS – WebFOCUS Client, Reporting Server, HTTP and/or application server – have the ability to generate traces, so does Developer Studio. Trace facilities enable software engineers to debug software issues, see how the software is failing and are useful when other troubleshooting techniques fail to correct a given issue.

The Developer Studio trace utility, Communication Layer Trace, allows tracing of all the calls performed by Developer Studio and captures instructions executed by the product. It is useful in debugging communication layer calls. For instance, it can be used to tackle issues connecting to Reporting Server(s), WebFOCUS Client, establishing a connection to an HTTP or application server, or retrieving application resources.

The Developer Studio trace utility is an independent program that can be launched from the Developer Studio program group, by selecting "Communication Layer Trace" from the "WebFOCUS Developer Studio Utilities" subfolder.

To minimize the amount of information that is captured, we recommend you enable tracing just prior to the point that a process fails. For example, if applications are not listed under a configured Reporting Server available from the data servers area, connect to the Reporting Server, and enable traces just before you click the "Applications" folder. If the product fails at start up, tracing should be enabled before Developer Studio is launched.

As of Release 7, the Developer Studio trace utility can also be used to troubleshoot issues related to the Create Synonym tool. If issues are experienced in this area, enable tracing and attempt to perform the Create Synonym task that fails. Traces for this task are generated under the following Developer Studio subfolder:

install_drive:\ibi\DevStudio71\srv71\wfs\
etlgtemp\

The Developer Studio trace utility is very simple to use: The developer simply needs to start this utility by selecting the On option, keep the default Trace Level option for All Levels and optionally alter the location where the trace file will be created.

The generated trace file should be forwarded to a technical support analyst for research and analysis by the Information Builders software engineering staff.