Summary

This chapter started by looking in some detail at how to prepare for debugging a Web service and its clients. Once you see some of the vigorous "under-the-surface" activity that happens in order to support the seamless interaction between a Web service and its clients , you have a much better idea of where to start when you try to set up Web services debugging properly.

The chapter continued by looking at debugging a Web service when called by a Web browser and by a Windows Forms application. The HTTP and SOAP communication protocols are different, and this can be confusing. You saw that the actual debugging of a Web service is exactly the same as for any non-Web VB .NET application.

Next, the chapter covered dealing with unhandled exceptions thrown by a Web service. You need to understand this process if you want to deliver useful error messages to developers while delivering only generic error messages to potential hackers.

Finally, the chapter explored how to intercept the SOAP stream in order to log the SOAP messages that pass back and forth between a Web service and its SOAP clients. Access to this low-level debugging information is essential for analyzing Web service communication issues.