Introduction
This is the fourth in a series of posts that I am writing on the topic of NetWeaver Business Client. Apologies for the delay, I've been busy with other things. I am writing these posts from my own view point as a long time NetWeaver Portal consultant and I am trying to compare concepts that I am familiar with from the Portal with similar concepts in the NWBC. You can find the introductory post here The NetWeaver Business Client (NWBC) - A Portal Consultants Guide. My goal is to show the way things are done in NWBC to other people already familiar with the Portal.
Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble
I suppose in an ideal world everything would just work and you'd never have to troubleshoot or debug - but imagine how much fun and learning you'd miss out on! Some people probably find this tedious and frustrating but I actually find it very interesting and challenging (sometimes I think I might have made quite a good detective - move over Mr. Holmes) and there is a great amount of satisfaction to be had when you work out "what the BEEP is going on!"
Of course you need the right tools and techniques to get to the bottom of problems, without the tools to see more deeply into what is happening everything looks like a black box and at best you are just guessing. So lets get started...
Client >>> Server or somewhere in between?
Just as with the Portal when you use NWBC some stuff happens on your PC (client) and some happens on the backend ABAP system (server) and then of course there is the bit in between (the network). Sometimes you'll know where to start, other times you'll need to do an end-to-end trace to work it out. There are tools for all of this:
NWBC Trace (Client)
The NWBC Desktop client has it's own tracing tool built in. You can set the tracing level by going to Menu > Settings > Support and choose increase the tracing level to Verbose.
The trace file it creates (NWBC.exe.#<pid>.n.log) is located in the folder C:\Users\<userid>\AppData\Local\SAP\NWBC\Traces you can just open it with any text editor. SAP support will probably ask you to create a trace like this and attach it to any message you raise with them for support.
Web Development Tools (Client)
You can't use the built in IE Developer tools from within the NWBC Desktop client but you can always open the canvas area in a new window and then fire up the developer tools then. These tools are great for debugging any type of web application and very useful for all Portal related debugging too. You can see the network traffic and of course the JavaScript console is very useful too.
***UPDATE (Jan 2015): Please refer to bradley.pokroy blog here about how to debug javascript inside NWBC JavaScript Debugging in NWBC ***
Fiddler (Network)
In order to see the HTTP traffic travelling between the NWBC client and the ABAP server you can use a HTTP proxy too like Fidder this is a perfect way to see NWBC making calls to the ABAP server runtime and work out what's really going on.
ABAP Debugger (Server)
Of course on the server side you have all your normal ABAP tools. What better way to work out what's going on then to stick a break-point in the HANDLE_REQUEST method of the NWBC runtime class /UI2/CL_NWBC_HTTP and step your way through the code, I guarantee you'll learn something doing that!
Summing Up
Hopefully you have some idea now where to start when it comes to troubleshooting and debugging NWBC issues. It's probably also worth just saying that it is best to always try to be on the latest (or next to latest) versions of both the desktop client (currently PL13) and the server runtime. SAP recommends using the User Interface Services runtime - you'll know if your using it by the "ui2" that appears in all the URLs and in the ABAP classes.
I hope this helps you get to the bottom of any issues you are having with NWBC and that you learn something along the way. If you've got any other great tips or tricks for debugging and troubleshooting NWBC please add them in the comments section and I can add them in here too.
As always I really like to get your feedback, so please add your comments and thoughts below. Thanks!
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