To test the user-defined node that you create for a connector,
add your node to a message flow. You can then use one of the debugging
tools that are provided with IBM® Integration Bus.
About this task
After you create a user-defined node for your connector,
you can test it by adding it to a message flow in the IBM Integration Toolkit. You add a user-defined node
for a connector in the same way that you would add any node to a message
flow. You can use debugging and logging tools to ensure that the
user-defined node is behaving as expected.
Procedure
To test your user-defined node in the IBM Integration Toolkit, complete the following steps:
- Create a message flow by following the instructions in Creating a message flow.
- Add your user-defined node to the message flow by following
the instructions in Adding a message flow node. Add other
appropriate message flow nodes to complete your message flow logic.
- Use any of the following methods to test your message flow:
- Flow Exerciser
To check that your message flow is processing
messages as expected, send messages to the flow by using the Flow
Exerciser. You can then use the Flow Exerciser to show the path that
each message takes, and the structure and content of the logical message
tree at any point in a message flow. For more information, see Testing your message flow by using the Flow Exerciser.
- Flow debugger
You can set breakpoints in a message flow,
then step through the flow while you examine and change message variables.
To use the flow debugger, you must first deploy your message flow.
For more information, see Testing your message flow by using the flow debugger
- User trace
To view logging output from the connector,
enable user trace. Message flow nodes write messages to user trace
when they are processing work. These messages show the activity in
a message flow, such as which nodes are activated, what code they
run, and through which terminals the messages are sent. To use user
trace, you must first deploy your message flow.
Message about
your message flow are shown in the trace log file with a name in the
following form: flowName_udnDisplayName. If the
name of your user-defined node contains spaces, the spaces are replaced
by underscore characters. For example, if the message flow is called myDatabaseTestFlow.msgflow,
and the display name of the user-defined node is My Database
Input, the entry in the trace log file is labeled myDatabaseTestFlow_My_Database_Input.
For more information, see Testing your message flow by enabling user trace.
- Trace nodes
You
can add a Trace node to a message flow to write debugging messages
to a file, to user trace, or to the system log. You can then review
those messages after the message flow processes some data. For more
information, see Testing your message flow by adding Trace nodes.