I would like to hear how to Debug B2B Flow Service and inter-connected services when routing rules are defined for a Business transaction.
Let me quote an example of this case.
When using the webMethods for RosettaNet Sample tutorial, the initiating partner of PIP3A4 sends a PO Requsition thro’ a browser based client and invokes a Flow service in B2B. After this service gets invoked the entire business process is connected with related background process wherein Routing Action takes.
So I need to know the connected process in the B2B and how the document is handled before it completes its operation thro’ Debug.
Currently, I could Debug independent Flows but unaware to debug the entire process.
Your suggestions/ideas are most welcome.
You could use the builtin services savePipelineToFile and restorePipelineFromFile. First insert savePipelineToFile (with a filename as an input parameter) as the first step in the flow service that is invoked from the client. Then invoke the flow once through the client. You can then replace the savePipelineToFile step with a restorePipelineFromFile using the same filename as input. Then you can step through the whole process with your B2B Integrator.
Hope this helps.
A trick that we use at ecomSoft which is more automatic also uses savePipeline and restorePipeline, but do it in a more automatic fashion. Add an optional input string (we normally use testFlag). At the beginning of the service, add a branch (on testFlag). If testFlag is null, savePipeline. If testFlag is anything else (default), restorePipeline.
The beauty of this trick is that the service will now automatically save pipeline when it is called by another service (since testFlag will == null). When you're doing interactive debugging, just assign anything to testFlag, and you'll have the data from the previous run in the pipeline! Remember to drop testFlag when you're done!
quick note though, it’s heavily recommended to use the ‘ToFile’ versions of Save/Restore pipeline. Otherwise, the saved pipelines exist in server memory until they are removed/saved over or the server is restarted.
just FYI