Detailed Session Debugging Information

Clicking the sessions link in the Debug heading of the detailed debugging section of any debugging page takes you to the Sessions section of the debugging page. This section provides a link labeled top frame (Session-ID), where Session-ID is an internal Watson™ Explorer Engine identifier for the debugging log for the session that returned the current set of search results. Clicking this link takes you to a Debug Sessions page that provides a sequential view of each step in that session. Figure 1 shows a sample Debug Sessions page.

Tip: You can also get to the Debug Sessions section from within the Watson Explorer Engine administration tool by selecting the Debug Sessions from the drop-down menu associated with the Management header link. You can then scroll through the available sessions, looking for a specific ID number or a time that corresponds to a search that you performed with debugging turned on.

Once a Debug Sessions page is displayed, you can move forward and backward through the session to examine the various steps involved in requesting, retrieving, and displaying your search results. Any steps in which an error occurred will be displayed in red. To move to the next page of session activities, click the >>Next link. To move to the previous page of session activities, click the <<Prev link. To move to the beginning of the session, click the < link. To move to the end of the session, click the > link.

To see detailed information about the exact activities involved in any step in the session, click the triangle to the left of the label for that step. This displays an expanded view of that particular step. Figure 2 shows an example of the expanded view of a session step. You can also expand all steps or collapse all steps by using the [open] and [close] links in the upper right.

Figure 2. An Expanded Entry in Session Debugging Information

Walking through every step involved in a complete session between submitting a query and viewing results can be somewhat tedious, but provides all of the information that you should need to successfully identify and resolve problems communicating with sources and retrieving your search results.

Once you can successfully retrieve and display search results, you may be interested in seeing why results were selected and how they were prioritized. For information about the detailed per-result information provided in the debugging screen, click Per-Result Debugging Information.