One of the biggest time-savers in in ADF 11g (R1) development, is working on the application while it is running on the WLS server in debug mode. In this mode, I can analyze the execution of my code, inspect variables and make many code changes that are applied ‘on the fly’. I can then analyze the execution of the modified code and so on.

Recently I was debugging a piece of Java code that was executed as part of a Web application. I had started the (ADF) web application on WebLogic Server in Debug mode and using JDeveloper for remote debugging. I had inserted several breakpoints in the code. Whenever the thread would hit the breakpoint, execution would be paused and control was handed to me to inspect and potentially manipulate variables, analyze the callstack and step-by-step investigate code execution. Wonderful!

Unfortunately however, the breakpoint was in a section that was invoked quite frequently, probably because it was somehow located inside a loop. I was interested only in inspecting a very specific situation – only two out of more than one hundred breakpoint occurrences. After clicking my way through dozens of irrelevant breakpoint instances – and just missing the one More >