Microsoft SharePoint 2010 is a very extensible product that developers can customize to suit various business needs. Because SharePoint is based on Microsoft ASP.NET, it provides developers with the same debugging and logging options that are available to traditional ASP.NET websites. In addition to what ASP.NET provides, SharePoint 2010 introduces additional options to assist developers in monitoring and troubleshooting applications in the areas of debugging and logging.
This article touches on various debugging and logging points and techniques that developers can use in their custom SharePoint 2010 applications.
What's New in SharePoint 2010 for Logging and Debugging
The best applications contain a good measure of logging to assist developers in tracking down errors when things do not go as they were designed or when unexpected things occur. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 offered developers all the tools that were available in ASP.NET, such as the debug and trace log. Developers could also write to the SharePoint log, known as the Unified Logging Service (ULS), but it required some extra work to write directly to the log files.
Microsoft added more logging and debugging capabilities to SharePoint 2010 to help developers include additional monitoring and troubleshooting to their custom applications. This article addresses the following new areas in SharePoint 2010:
- Correlation tokens
- Logging database
- Custom error pages
- Developer Dashboard
