I'm looking for insight on how to instrument a runtime platform to expose the source type of a Microsoft .Net binary deserialization failure.
When using BinaryFormatter.Deserialize(StreamingContextStates.CrossMachine) and one of the types does not exist in the current binaries; instead of throwing an error, .Net inserts the object [TypeLoadExceptionHolder]. Particularly for collections, this causes no immediate problem.
Subsequently when the collection is serialized for transmission between application tiers; the platform receives a 'serialization failure' because [TypeLoadExceptionHolder] cannot be serialized. So the resulting error is useless for actually providing clues as to the source-type that caused the problem. Now the hunt (time suck) is on to see which developer (of hundreds) added a new type to a million-line platform.
This problem happens with some frequency because of the serialization stream used to support the platform sessioncache. Code is deployed fairly often and in an incremental fashion. Customer page-requests can bounce between old and new versions of the codebase during the deployment window. Careless introduction of a new type will cause the page-requests on the old version to blow up.
Any thoughts about providing runtime rich error/trap would be appreciated.
(SerializationException) Type 'System.Runtime.Serialization.TypeLoadExceptionHolder' in Assembly 'mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' is not marked as serializable. - at System.Runtime.Serialization.FormatterServices.InternalGetSerializableMembers(RuntimeType type) - at System.Runtime.Serialization.FormatterServices.GetSerializableMembers(Type type, StreamingContext context) - at System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.WriteObjectInfo.InitMemberInfo() - at System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.WriteObjectInfo.InitSerialize(Object obj, ISurrogateSelector surrogateSelector, StreamingContext context, SerObjectInfoInit serObjectInfoInit, IFormatterConverter converter, ObjectWriter objectWriter) - at System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.WriteObjectInfo.Serialize(Object obj, ISurrogateSelector surrogateSelector, StreamingContext context, SerObjectInfoInit serObjectInfoInit, IFormatterConverter converter, ObjectWriter objectWriter) - at System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.ObjectWriter.Write(WriteObjectInfo objectInfo, NameInfo memberNameInfo, NameInfo typeNameInfo) - at System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.ObjectWriter.Serialize(Object graph, Header[] inHeaders, __BinaryWriter serWriter, Boolean fCheck) - at System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.BinaryFormatter.Serialize(Stream serializationStream, Object graph, Header[] headers, Boolean fCheck)