Developer Studio Debugging Tool

By Jamie Monroe

&ECHO, the debugging tool we all know and love, has made its debut in Developer Studio 7.1.3 as the new Message Viewer. The tool makes it possible to display error messages, informational messages, commands, and Dialogue Manager control statements in a separate frame below the report output whenever a request is run.

Happily, all this is available through the GUI, whether you develop in a Managed Reporting, Local Projects, or Data Servers environment.

The Message Viewer mode is selected from a dropdown list on the main toolbar in Developer Studio.

When you select an option it is saved and used for all subsequent requests until you change it. All Message Viewer options are available for all report output formats.

The default option is "Message Viewer OFF." This disables the Message Viewer and suppresses the display of lines stacked for execution and Dialogue Manager control statements.

"Message Viewer ON" displays messages such as number of records and lines.

"Display command lines," the equivalent of &ECHO=ON, displays messages and lines that are expanded and stacked for execution.

"Display Dialogue Manager commands," the equivalent of &ECHO=ALL, displays messages and lines that are expanded and stacked for execution while also displaying all Dialogue Manager control statements.

In a WebFOCUS self-service application, the developer simply adds the parameter to the URL string as in the following:

http://localhost/ibi_apps/WFServlet?IBIF_ex=test&IBIWF_msgviewer=echoon
where
IBIWF_msgviewer=OFF, ON, ECHOON, ECHOALL

Happy debugging, everyone.