Process Debugging in Metastorm BPM

As I was prepping for this year's User Conference, it occurred to me how far we've come in just a year. Last year I had the distinct pleasure of introducing and demonstrating Version 9, which was still very much a beta at that point, to everyone at the User Conference. I proceeded to run through an overview of Version 9 and talk about all of the great new features and benefits it would provide. Immediately afterwards I spoke to quite a few people that were very excited about Version 9, but there was one question that kept coming up, "Will I be able to debug in Version 9?" I'm sure that no less than 10 people asked me the same question, and my response was the same, "No, but the architecture will support us adding this in the future." Well the future is here today.

So, here I am trying to get my demo together for the User Conference and I'm having some issues. I press Debug on the ribbon bar and Visual Studio opens up with all of code from my process.

start debugging.jpg

I find the activity I think is causing the problem and put in a breakpoint. I go into IE and start testing my demo, when all of the sudden Visual Studio starts flashing at me. What the! I haven't even gotten to what I thought the error is. I open up Visual Studio and it tells me that I have an unhandled exception in my Write to File activity.

20i84D76563A3AB599F

Doh! It seems like when I copied over the solution, I didn't setup the correct path needed to create the file. At least that is easy to correct.

A few things to mention if you want to play around with the new debugging capability. You'll need a single machine environment (Engine, Web, Designer) along with Visual Studio 2008. We haven't fully tested 2010 yet (it was only available a few weeks before release), but the team is telling me that they are using it already. After installing SR1 you'll need to use Add/Remove Programs to install the Metastorm Diagnostics Service, and then you'll need to make sure its web.config has the correct DB credentials. You'll be able to find the config file under \Metastorm\BPM\Engine\Diagnostics\ProcessDiagnosticsService.

Get the Raid out and happy debugging!

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Comments

Jerome_Pearce

Can you debug Visual scripts in the same way? As they merely generate code, it could be possible I'd have thought, although it may be difficult to represent well.

Paul Denton

Jerome,

Rob will correct me, but I believe that all code executed within a Project is part of the debugging. I understand that would include code constructed trhough the use of Visual Scripts.

Rob Vignerot

Paul is correct. You can debug everything in the project except for client side scripts.

David Williams

Hi guys,

Do I need any particular version of Visual Studio to enable debugging? For example could I use Visual Studio Express Edition?

Thanks,

Dai

Rob Vignerot

We have only tested on the development edition for 2008. I know the team has been using 2010 informally, and we plan to certify that with the next release.

Scott_Leclerc

Let's say I'm in a debugging session and I find the bug I was looking for. So I go back into the MBPM Designer and correct the problem. Is there a way to deploy the changes and refresh the Visual Studio debugging session so it will continue debugging with the new changes? Every time I click on the "Debug" icon it loads a new instance of Visual Studio and it would be great if the previous debugging session could be resumed with the modified code.

Zardi_Paolo

Hi guys,

in my PC I have both Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010. Is there a way to set which version the Debug module will use?

Thanks,

Paolo