Replaying an Orchestration Instance in HAT

When you replay an orchestration, you are given the opportunity to watch the activity of an orchestration on a shape-by-shape basis. By replaying an orchestration in HAT you can pinpoint where a problem may have originated. For example, by looking at a message flow through a decision shape you can determine if the decision logic is working properly. You can also easily determine where a message was suspended due to an exception or error.

To replay an orchestration instance in the debugger

1. To start the HAT tool, click Start, point to Programs, point to Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006, and then click Health and Activity Tracking. 2. On the HAT tool menu, click Queries, and then choose Most recent 100 service instances or one of the other query choices as appropriate to your situation. 3. In the search results, right-click an orchestration service instance and then click Orchestration Debugger. This brings up the Orchestration Debugger as shown below: 4. Individual actions are listed on each row. Click a row to see the corresponding shape. The shape will be green for start actions and blue for completion actions. 5. Clicking the final initialization action will highlight the path a message took through the orchestration. This can be useful when an orchestration has one or more decision shapes. 6. To switch to the Message Flow views, click Debug | Switch to Message Flow. On the Message Flow screen, click the Orchestration Debugger link at the top of the flow to return to the Orchestration Debugger view.

When viewing an orchestration in the Orchestration Debugger, you will see its state at the last commit point. If you want to see the actual state of the orchestration, you must attach to it by first suspending the instance and then resuming debug mode. You can then attach to the instance and see its current state.

Source: Microsoft