Debugging with the Tracer tool

Purpose

Use the Tracer to test and debug activities, decision rules, service rules, parse rules, and flows. You can see in summary or detail the processing that occurs as you or another requestor executes an activity, declarative rule, or flow rule.

You can pause and resume processing, view or set the value of watch variables, and drill down to step-by-step details. You can view trace events for any requestor connected to your server node, not just  your own session.

Starting the Tracer

To start the Tracer tool:

• Select Run > Tracer to trace your current session and Thread.
• Select Run > Trace Open Rule when a service rule or activity rule is open in the workspace. You can start the rule with the Run toolbar tool ().
• Type the keyboard shortcut CTRL + T.

Setup

Use these controls to set up trace conditions. Click Play () to start the Tracer, or Pause () to stop tracing. Depending on your access role, some Tracer capabilities may not be available to you.

Button	Function	Help
Connection	Choose a requestor session other than your own. Wait a few seconds until the Tracer connects.	Selecting a connection
Options	Select which RuleSets, rules, and events are to be traced.	Setting Tracer options
Breakpoints	Set or change breakpoints.	Setting breakpoints
Watch	Set or change watch variables	Setting watch variables
Save	Save Tracer output on the workstation as an Excel CSV or XML file.
Abbreviate Events?	After clicking Play (), select to reduce the amount of clipboard detail retained for each Tracer row.	Tips and notes

Operations

After selecting the connection and setting other options:

1. Minimize the Tracer window.
2. Perform the work that you want to trace (or wait for it to be performed, when tracing a requestor session other than your own session).
3. Restore the Tracer window to review its results.
4. As the target session runs, the Tracer display lists the events of each type that you selected in the Trace Options dialog box.

At any time tracing is paused, you can change any options using the buttons in the above table. After tracing begins, you can use these buttons:

Button	Function
Clear	Erase the displayed events.
Pause	Pause the session being traced at the next possible moment.
Continue	Resume processing after a Pause button click, or after a breakpoint event. Appears only after a pause.
Save	Save the Tracer results in the current window into a text file in Comma-Separated-Values format or as a more detailed XML file, depending on prconfig.xml settings. See Tracer — Adjusting the buffer size. You can open and print the saved CSV file with Microsoft Excel. (This operation is available only on user workstations that have installed the PegaClientSupport ActiveX control.)

Tracer tips and notes Tracing services Understanding Tracer results Tracer troubleshooting

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