Viewing Tracer results in the Tracer window
To maintain the quality of your application, you can use the Tracer window to interact with Tracer results. Each row in the window represents an event. The Tracer records selected events from the rule executions, database operations, and other event types that you select when you configure the Tracer.
- In the footer of Dev Studio, click the Tracer icon.
- In the Tracer window, analyze the Tracer output:
- To learn more about the event and view a Java stack trace if an exception occurred, click the value in the Line, Rule#, or Step column.
- To view the properties that were on the step page when the step began, click the value in the Step Page column.
- To open the corresponding rule, click the value in the Name column.
- To view the contents of the parameter page, click the value in the Line column, and then click Parameter Page Name.
- To view the contents of the primary page, click the value in the Line column, click Primary Page Name.
Tracer results window
The Tracer helps you debug your applications and improves the quality of your software for users. By analyzing results in the Tracer window, you can obtain more information about how your application runs in the system, as well as find and fix any issues.
The way the tracer results window groups information depends on the type of your application. If you use a standard Pega Platform application, the header row of the tracer results window contains the Pega node hash and computer name. For cluster-wide tracing of service rules, the tracer displays a separate section for each node that reported events.
For applications that rely on the Cosmos React, the Tracer results window groups the data by request ID. Because in the Cosmos React applications multiple requests can be active simultaneously, grouping events by requests ID provides more clarity, so that you can find relevant information faster.
The tracer records selected events from the rule executions, database operations, and other event types that you select when you configure the Tracer. Each row represents an event and is color-coded in the following way:
- Gray rows represent activity processing.
- Orange rows represent events from flow, decision, or declarative rules.
- Light blue rows represent PegaRULES database and cache operations.
The following table contains columns that you find in the Tracer results window. The values of some columns change depending on the type of event that you trace.
| Column | Description |
| Line | Number of events traced, where 1 marks the oldest event. |
| Thread | The Thread object for the step. |
| Int | The interaction number for the step. The system starts tracing the total number at login and resets upon logout. |
| Rule# | Count of distinct activities that are traced. The count is not reset to zero if
you clear all the events. When a single activity runs again later, the previously
assigned number is repeated. Rules other than activities are not assigned a number. |
| Step Method | For an activity, the value indicates the method that you associate with a
step. For a declarative rule or decision rule, the value indicates the start or end of a computation. For a when condition rule or Boolean expression, the value identifies the rule name or the expression. When you trace a database operation, this column lists the specific operation performed on the database, for example commit, insert, or update. |
| Step Page | Name of the step page. If the Step Page column of this step is blank, the
window displays the =unnamed= value. Step pages that
have messages set on them, such as error messages, have a bright orange background.
When you trace a database operation, this column lists the database table affected by the database operation in the Step Method column. |
| Step | Step number of this step. If two or more rows appear with the same step number, an iteration is in process at that step. |
| Status | Status of the method in the step that the system derives from the
pxMethodStatus property, such as
Good, Fail, or
Warn. A red background marks steps that fail and that
are not addressed by a transition. Exit Iteration marks the end of an iteration step. In this context, a red Fail row indicates an unhandled exception condition. If a method returns a Fail status but the step contains a transition, the Tracer row displays the status as Good and has a gray background. This behavior is consistent with the processing status that the next activity step to run perceives. The Good status reflects that the activity notes any existing error condition. When you trace a database operation, this column lists the number of bytes involved in a write to the database. |
| Watch | Properties for which you set up a watch variable. |
| Event Type | Type of event or rule, such as Step Begin, Step End, Activity End, Constraint, Expression, DecisionTree, or MapValue. The Begin and When End events identify the start of a when condition rule or a similar test, such as in a precondition or transition. |
| Elapsed | For Step End and Activity End rows, the value defines the elapsed time in seconds for the step. A Tracer operation might decrease the time interval value. |
| Name | Full name of the rule that Tracer traces, with all key parts. When you trace a database or cache operation, the Name and RuleSet columns are combined. The text in this combined column provides details on the rules that the system searches for in the cache, or on the size of the database operation. |
| Ruleset | Ruleset and version that contains the rule that Tracer traces. |
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