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Troubleshooting techniques for ASP.NET websites

Implementing Tracing

In ASP.NET trace data logged to file that is accessible via web browser.

Can inject own tracing calls into this log.

Enabled via web.config file or the ASP.NET Web Site Administration Tool (WSAT).

Includes information such as:

Trace Section Description
Request Details General details on request
Trace Information Performance info related to page life-cycle events
Control Tree Info on each control on page, e.g. size
Session State Displays session variables
Application State Displays application variables
Request Cookies Displays request cookies passed to server
Response Cookies Displays response cookies sent from server
Headers Collection The HTTP headers sent to server by client
Form Collection List of values posted back to server
QueryString Collection   List of values in query string
Server Variables Displays server variables

 

Enabling via WSAT

From Visual Studio select Website | ASP.NET Configuration

Click Application tab of WSAT

Click Configure Debugging and Tracing

Tick Capture tracing information

Trace Settings

WSAT WEB.CONFIG Description
Capture Tracing Information enabled Enables application tracing
Display Tracing Info On Individual Pages   pageOutput When true trace info displayed directly on web page being traced
Display Trace Output For localOnly When set to "Local Requests Only" tracing only takes place for requests from machine on which web server is running. "All Requests" will trace requests from any machine.
Sort Order traceMode Sort trace output by time or category
Number of trace requests to cache requestLimit Number of records to hold in trace log
Select which trace results to cache mostRecent When set to "Most Recent" trace cache continues to update, overwriting older entries. When set to "Oldest Trace Results" the cache no longer updates once full.

 

Enabling via web.config

Edit attributes of trace element:

<system.web>
<trace enabled="true" pageOutput="false" localOnly="false" mostRecent="true" />
</system.web>

Tracing at Page Level

Can enable tracing for specific pages via @ Page directive:

<@ Page trace="true" %&>

View trace data

Can view on each webpage or the entire log at the http://server/application/trace.axd page.

Displaying trace on individual pages can be a security loophole - disable on production environments.

Custom Data

Use Trace class to add own trace messages.

Member of the Page object

Use Write method to add entries to trace log.

Tracing AJAX Applications

No server process on which to rely, instead have to debug code as executes in browser.

Microsoft AJAX library provides Sys.Debug client-side namespace, includes assert, trace, clearTrace, traceDump and fail methods.

Output goes to Visual Studio output window and in Text Area control on page including your JavaScript - providing the Text Area has an ID of "TraceConsole". If browser has debugging console then output will also appear there.

Monitoring Running Applications

Provides info on overall application health.

Set of classes in System.Web.Management used for health tracking.

Health Monitoring Classes

Work by raising and logging events.

Enable individual events based on what aspects of application are to be monitored.

First step is to determine which events to listen for. Events are defined as classes. The classes based on hierarchy that defines data to be logged.

Can derive your own classes from these to write custom health monitoring.

Class Description
WebBaseEvent Base class for web events
WebManagementEvent Web events that contain application process information
WebHeartbeatEvent Periodic event raising info about app at set intervals
WebRequestEvent Contains web request info
WebApplicationLifetimeEvent Raised when significant event occurs, e.g. start or shutdown
WebBaseErrorEvent Error based events
WebErrorEvent Provides info on error when occurs
WebRequestErrorEvent Request data for request errors
WebAuditEvent Creates audit (Security) events
WebSuccessAuditEvent Raised when successful security operation occurs
WebAuthenticationSuccessAuditEvent   Provides info when successful user authentication occurs
WebFailureAuditEvent Raised when failed security operation occurs
WebAuthenticationFailureAuditEvent   Raised when failed attempt at user authentication occurs
WebViewStateFailureAuditEvent Raised when view state fails to load

 

When no which events to listen for, enable a listener.

ASP.NET provides set of listeners used to collect web event information.

Can write own custom listeners by extending existing WebEventProvider class.

Configuring Health Monitoring

Turn on web events and connect to listeners via web.config <healthMonitoring> node.

<healthMonitoring> contains heartBeatInterval which indicates number of seconds between raising WebHeartbeatEvent events.

Individual events contain minInterval attribute (works in similar fashion to heartBeatInterval).

To configure event and provider:

  1. Add eventMappings child element to healthMonitoring
  2. Add providers child element to healthMonitoring - indicates the health monitoring listeners.
  3. Add rules to healthMonitoring to associated web events and listeners

Don't need to register default web events and providers - done in servers configuration file. Only need to add rules to apps Web.config to turn these on. Note, need to know configured name of event class:

<system.web>

<healthMonitoring enabled="true" heartbeatInterval="1">

<rules>

<add name="Heart Beat" eventName="Heartbeats" provider="EventLogProvider" profile="Default" />

</rules>

</healthMonitoring>

</system.web>

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