Debugging and Web Services

As the consumer of a Web Service, you have to develop your client in a somewhat blind fashion. Generally speaking, you don't have access to the service's log files or other debugging mechanisms. For complex systems, this is a difficult arrangement.

Because most services probably will not want to provide general access to log files for fear of exposing proprietary information, one approach is to separate logging that is intended for the client from system-level logging. Additionally, client log files must be maintained separately so that client A doesn't see client B's activity. This configuration is shown in Figure 9.2.

Figure 9.2. Web service logging.

Unfortunately, creating all these log files is far from scalable ...

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