Debugging WCF service using SvcTraceView on application server

Debugging web services can be pain, specially when they are hosted on a application server within a SharePoint farm. There are several ways one can debug web services though, e.g. using a visual studio remote debugger but what if it doesn't hit your web services breakpoints or your network administrator do?

Easiest way to figure out what's wrong with web services is to use SvcTraceViewer.exe e.g. why my code not able to find the hosted service or if the problem is with service account authentication.

Not so difficult to set it up, all you need to do is to add a some tag in your hosted WCF services and then open the SvcTraceViewer to view the created file.

Step-1:
Find hosted WCF service's web.config and add following tag to it within configuration tag. It will recycle the application pool of hosted service itself when you will save changes to web.config file.

<configuration>
<system.diagnostics>
    <trace autoflush="true" />
    <sources>
            <source name="System.ServiceModel" 
                    switchValue="Information, ActivityTracing"
                    propagateActivity="true">
            <listeners>
               <add name="sdt" 
                   type="System.Diagnostics.XmlWriterTraceListener" 
                   initializeData= "WcfConfigExample.e2e" />
            </listeners>
         </source>
    </sources>
</system.diagnostics>
</configuration>

Step-2:
Find SvcTraceViewer.exe within installed Visual studio files, location might change depending on version of VS, however since I am using VS 2010 ultimate so I find EXE file at,

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bin\NETFX 4.0 Tools

In some cases you will need to open the EXE file as administrator.

Step-3:
Do something to trigger WCF services and check folder where web.config file exists as that's where it will create "SdrConfigExample.e2e" log file, once you find it. just open the SvcTraceViewer.exe file.

Step-4:
Press Ctrl + O keys; Navigate to SdrConfigExample.e2e file to load log trace file in viewer.

Step-5:
Search for specific terms using Ctrl + F or just go through logs. You can also add custom logs to your WCF service and find them in here to figure out where exactly your code is getting exception at, You can find more about Trace Viewer at, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa751795(v=vs.110).aspx