Debug .NET 2.0 web service from VS2003?

Question

I have a web service created in a VS2005 asp.net 2.0 framework app that I need to consume in a 1.1 framework app. I built the web service - then built a little 1.1 framework tester app to call it and it worked great. So now I have added the web reference exactly the same way to the main 1.1 framework app that I need to consume it in. The web method being called is of type boolean and returns true if successful. I get back true - but the updates that the web method are supposed to perform are not occuring. When I was calling the web method from the small test app - they occured just fine.

My question is - how can I debug this from my 1.1 consumer into my 2.0 provider? MS docs say I should just be able to set a breakpoint on the call to the web service and step right in (currently in development they are both on the same machine). This does not work as it just steps right over that line of code. Any help appreciated.

Answer 1

Make sure you have <compilation debug="true"/> in both web.config files, and make sure they are both built in DEBUG mode.

Now that I think of it, that probably won't work. I presume you are debugging the .NET 1.1 code with VS2003, right? It's not going to step into .NET 2.0 code. You're going to have to start a separate VS2005 instance, attach to the process running the web service, set your breakpoints, then wait.

Answer 2

In VS 2005 or 2008 you can attach any process to debugger but in VS2003 i don't no, its very arquaiq.

If don't work you can always convert from 1.1 to 2.0 is very cleany because have half functions of 2.0

Answer 3

I have never been able to debug a 2.0 web service using VS2003, but what I usually do, is set up two debuggers. One for the 1.1 app in VS2003, and a second debugger attached to IIS that's running the webservice using VS2005 (attach to aspnet_wp.exe in WinXP, or W3WP.exe on WinServer2K3 or Vista). That way, you can debug your 1.1 app, and you can also have a debugger sitting on your Web Service.

Another way to always launch your debugger is to add the following line to your code, and it will pop up a dialog box when called that will give you the correct debugger options:

System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break();

If you add that into your web service when you want to debug, it'll force you to open a debugger to continue code execution.