Debugging

Don't blame the Deployment Team if your application fails and you can't figure out why.

Increasingly we have seen project teams with problems in Production (or UAT for that matter) and they are at a loss to explain what the problem is.  Sometimes there is a cryptic error message in one of the event logs along the lines of "Object reference not set to an instance of an object".  <sarcasm> Now that is a descriptive error message. </sarcasm>

There are a number of things you can do to make your life easier:

• The various .NET languages come with a feature called a Try...Catch block.  Where you try something and if things don't work you catch the exception.  Amazing how that works.  If you haven't put Try...Catch blocks in your code, particularly around any code that is calling a service outside of your control (SHR, EPS, DMS, PRS, etc.), then you score -5 points on the attention to detail rating.
• Did you know that if you catch an exception you can add your own information?  Yes, if you've caught something you can add information such as what you were doing when you got the exception or copies of the data used in the method so that people don't have to guess at what went wrong.  If you just rethrow the exception without adding any information, deduct 5 points from your "value added" score.
• Did you know that there is a Trace class in .NET?  It can do all sorts of things for you, such as allowing you to dump out detailed trace information (that is if you've written detailed trace information in your application) by changing a config file or even dynamically through code.  This is a very handy feature when used in combination with breadcrumbing so that you can see the complete route that an application has taken and, if you've added it, the data used throughout the process.  If you've never used Trace then how do you ever expect to trace anything in Production?

There are lots of things you can do to make your life easier when it comes to resolving problems in Production.  Simple things that can be useful in any environment.  Simple things that you should know how to use and how to use effectively.