Debugging

Debugging. That necessary evil that none of us dare turn on in our production environments unless it is absolutely necessary. We all wonder what all that stuff does don't we? Well, let's investigate what some of it does, and what it means.

I have read through numerous scenarios, mechanisms, and tools to help in debugging my CF applications. What I have found is that a combination of some default debugging information, as well as some custom code, is generally the most appropriate solution. I certainly found the short section about the Administrator API on page 38 of the "Configuring and Administering ColdFusion MX" manual a very welcome read (yes, some people actually do read the manuals, it's sad really).

Several years ago Macromedia had an excellent class for "Performance Analysis and Tuning." If you are lucky, you can still find the course materials floating around the Net. I haven't seen it offered as a class in the past few years but I do know that they still provide it as a professional services engagement. If you are interested, I recommend calling MM and asking customer services about it. I am also under the impression that AboutWeb and UniversalMind both have a good foundation in "Performance Analysis and Tuning" engagements and teach some of the fundamentals.

Now, before we get started talking about debugging performance, let's discuss what the default settings can provide you.

Here are a few caveats about utilizing the default debugging information:

1.  To utilize CF's default debugging information it must be enabled in the administrator by selecting the "Enable Debugging" checkbox.

2.  When this setting is left unchecked, it will override the settings listed under the "Custom Debugging Output" heading.

• Note: By enabling debugging, your server will incur a certain amount of performance degradation. In previous versions, this could be significant. However, in the latest version it seems to be nominal.

3.  Sites utilizing CSS positioning, in general, will find that the debugging content often gets hidden behind the content, forcing the developer to comb through the source.

• This can be resolved in your own custom debugging by utilizing JavaScript to find the bottom of your <div>s, then adjusting the div containing your debug information below that.

4.  CFCs, data from Web services, complex objects, or structures are not, appropriately, represented in the default debugging settings.

5.  Multiple instancing of your environment will certainly cause issues with your default debugging settings.

• It is recommended that you supplement your default debugging with your own brand of custom debugging and error handling.

It should be noted that debugging and error handling are not exactly the same thing. However, they do generally run hand in hand. You'll likely use a number debugging techniques in your error handling. Our discussion today will focus on debugging and, more specifically, the tools used for performance debugging but not really error handling.

The type of information that a developer can get out of the default setting is certainly useful and significant. We can get our hands on the standard application, CGI, client, cookie, form, request, server, session, and URL structures as well as database activity. This is what most developers think of when referring to CF Debugging information. There are a few new features like <CFTRACE> and <CFTIMER> that have been added to the arsenal for performance debugging. In addition, we can also find settings for Flash Form errors as well as my personal favorite, CFSTAT.

Debugging data, if enabled, will default to the localhost or 127.0.0.1. To see your debug information, your IP address must be listed within the Debugging IP Addresses section of the CF Administrator. Have you ever asked your systems administrator to add your IP address to the CF Administrator? You need to be able to see what variables the users are setting during their use of your application, right? Maybe get the timing of those long running queries? That button for "Add Current" IP can be a dangerous thing. I've seen many sites where some administrator or developer has simply clicked that button not realizing that they just added the proxy servers IP and are now broadcasting debugging information at the bottom of every page. Although, when you have debugging turned on for your application server, you should also be aware that whether you see the output or not you will incur the added performance hit. This may not affect your environment by adding 100 or so milliseconds per request, but in the grand scheme of things every little bit can count.

One of the most critical pieces that slow your applications is database connectivity and access. As a result, I think we should really start there with our discussion of specific features. Database Activity, once you have enabled this feature, will allow CF to output every query it performs, from the beginning of the request till the end of the request. It will also provide the data source it was performed against, the number of records it returned, the SQL statement, the template it was run in, the time it was run, and the time it took to process the request.

When I say CF will output every query it performs, I mean that in a literal sense. If you're the kind of developer who prefers to manipulate your code at a finer grain, to create your queries utilizing "QueryNew()" and its corresponding functions, you won't find those in the default debug information. You will, however, find that they will show up in CFSTAT, but we'll cover that later. This is one area where you will need to utilize <CFQUERY> to perform a query of queries to get your manually generated query into the debug output. It should be of additional note that the use of this technique is not really to get the timing of your manually generated query. It's really more for the benefit of having the query list so that you can remember to compensate for the timing in your design.

Here's an example:

<cfset qryFoo = QueryNew("col1,col2")>
<cfset tmp = QueryAddRow(qryFoo)>
<cfset tmp = QuerySetCell(qryFoo, "col1", "abc")>
<cfset tmp = QuerySetCell(qryFoo, "col2", "def")>

<cfdump label="qryFoo" var="#qryFoo#"><br />

<cfquery name="qryFoo2" dbtype="query">
    Select * from qryFoo
</cfquery>

<cfdump label="qryFoo2" var="#qryFoo2#">

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