Tracing Web service calls

[magennisw]

Our three tier web application is "pausing" under test loading (IIS 6.0
(win2003) -> Web services (win2003) -> SQL server) . The CPU usage on
the W3WP.exe on both the web server and middle tier drops to zero for
about 5 seconds then springs back into life. Nothing in the NT event
logs. No SQL database blocking.

I suspect it is a particular web service call. With SQL server I can
start a "trace" and get a list of all SQL calls (and their
parameters) and how long they are taking - this allows me to track
down "slow" SQL code. I can't see any tool that allows me to do
this for web service calls? Surly there is some IIS plug in that will
allow me to monitor this traffic?

 

[Guest]

You can put tracing code right into the webservice that can be "turned on"
via a web.config setting. Use a custom TraceWriter to send the messages to a
log file, a database, or whatever you want.

Here is a short article along these lines that could be helpful:

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/articles/20030402.asp


Peter

 

[Kirk Allen Evans]

Another option is to use the IIS Diagnostics Tools.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/iis/diagnostictools/default.mspx

Kirk Allen Evans
Developer Evangelist
Microsoft Corporation
blogs.msdn.com/kaevans

=== This post provided "AS-IS" with no warranties and confers no rights ===

 

[magennisw]

Thanks for the suggestions. I tried the diag tools. They look helpful
if I get calls that hang, but not for looking into slower calls. Also
none of these tools show me the actual web service requests - something
that should be easy to do as its all XML. I think the IIS team needs to
have a look at the SQL tools and get something similar to their
profiler. I beleive IBM have created such a tool for their web service
solutions.

 

[Guest]

You can hook the OnBeforeSerialize and OnAfterSerialize events to output SOAP
Message logs. In ASP.NET 2.0, there are built -in configuration options to do
this without the need to write additional code.
Peter

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