Success at last - Cafe31a, WL 4.51, and EJB breakpoints

[Jim Despelteau]

Well, I finally got this to work without using EJB Projects within Cafe. My
setup includes VCafe 31a, the platforms "patch", WebLogic 4.51 SP7, JDK
1.2.2 on NT4 SP6.

The steps were
1. On initial install of Cafe 3.1, choose to install "Platforms" support in
one of the dialogs (this is not the default) (you may be able to just copy
the stuff off the CD after the fact, but this exercise is left to the
reader).
2. install 3.1a patch
3. install platforms "patch" vcdbg_generic_1.2.exe (if you chose Platforms
support install, this will be in your Cafe\platforms directory) This is a
self extracting exe, just follow the readme.txt instructions included.
4. start ddservices.exe (not from Program Group, but the one you just
extracted in the step above)
5. start the Weblogic server by using debugvm.exe, not java.exe (once
again, use the debugvm.exe you extracted in step 3)
6. Start VCafe
7. Attach to Process (if all is well so far, you will see your vm listed)
8. Under Project - Options - Directories, add paths for "Input class files"
and "Source files" (This is the hard one to get right)
9. Open EJB source file
10. Set breakpoint (if step 8 is not right, you'll get the infamous "No
source at line blah" error)
11. Execute some client that calls into your EJB method (I use an external
client outside of Cafe)
12. The breakpoint should hit (your mileage may vary however)

I'll add a few editorial comments (these are things I found through trial
and error)

1. Deploy the EJB's via jar files for Cafe debugging. I was deploying with
.ser files, and Cafe really likes to see a jar file
2. If you get step 8 wrong, you'll either get the "No source at line blah"
error or the Weblogic server will actually stop at your breakpoint, but
control will not transfer back to the Cafe debugger.
3. You'll most likely be importing other packages into your EJB's, so don't
forget to update "Input class files" and "Source files" to include these jar
files as well.
4. I did this all on one machine, haven't tried 2, figured I had enough
variables
5. If all of a sudden things don't work anymore after you close down Cafe
and restart Cafe, delete the Cafe cache file in the SymcJitCache directory
(Someone had posted this earlier to solve other strange behavior, good tip)
6. I haven't used this enough yet to form an opinion on robustness, etc...
7. I don't claim this is the best way, just the only way I got it to work
without using Cafe's EJB projects.

One more thing, so Todd, when do I get my site license????

Regards,

Jim Despelteau

[Tim Dutton (Symantec)]

Hi Jim,

Whew! Good work. I am glad that you are up and running.

P.S. I will alert Todd to the fact that he owes you one:)

Regards,

Tim Dutton
Internet Tools Technical Support
Symantec Corporation

[John Deviney]

Jim,

I've tried the steps you've outlined and I'm almost there but not quite. I
consistently get the "No source at line XXX ... " errors when I attach to the
weblogic debug vm.

I am compiling from the command line w/out optimizations and debug info on. I
am setting up my source and class paths in VC project options/directories. My
source points to the root of my source tree. For my class setting I've tried
root of my classes directory (no jars - all class/ser files) and individual
*.jar files residing in their respective weblogic deployment directories.

Am I possibly missing something else?

Could you possibly go into a little more detail on how you setup you source and
class paths in VC?

Thanks.

jhd

[Tim Dutton (Symantec)]

John,

You may want to try to e-mail Jim if you believe that he has the
reolution to your project issue.