Testing and Debugging

When developing a regular application with Visual Studio .NET, the application is tested and debugged by running it directly from Visual Studio .NET. You do this by selecting Debug, and then Start from the Visual Studio .NET menu. When developing a rules extension however, the extension is loaded and run by the Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003 server service. Because the Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003 server is a system service, it is started automatically when the system starts and the service cannot be started from Visual Studio .NET. To debug the rules extension, it is necessary to manually attach the debugger to the running Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003 server service process and then cause the extension to be loaded and used.

You can also start the debugger from within the rules extension source code with the Debugger.Launch method. However, for this method to work, the account used to run Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003 must be a member of the Local Administrators or Debugger Users group. For more information about the Debugger.Launch method, see the .NET Framework SDK Documentation.

If your rules extension requires other assemblies, install the other assemblies in the assemblies folder of the Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003 installation folder.

If any rules extension assembly file is replaced, any running management agents will be stopped and the run will return "stopped-extension-dll-updated-version" the next time the management agent attempts to use a rules extension.