Testing and Debugging

When you develop a regular application using Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, you test and debug the application by running it directly from Visual Studio. You do this by clicking the Debug menu, and then clicking Start Debugging in Visual Studio. However, when you are developing a rules extension, the extension is loaded and run by Forefront Identity Manager Synchronization Service (FIM Synchronization Service). Because the FIM Synchronization Service server is a system service, it starts automatically when the system starts, and the service cannot be started from Visual Studio 2008. To debug the rules extension, you must manually attach the debugger to the running FIM Synchronization Service server process and then cause the extension to be loaded and used.

You can also start the debugger from within the rules extension source code using the Debugger.Launch method. However, for this method to work, the account that is used to run FIM Synchronization Service must be a member of the Local Administrators or Debugger Users group. For more information, see System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Launch in the .NET Framework SDK Documentation.

If your rules extension requires other assemblies, install the other assemblies in the assemblies folder of the FIM Synchronization Service installation folder.

If any rules extension assembly file is replaced, any running management agents are stopped and the run returns stopped-extension-dll-updated-version the next time the management agent tries to use a rules extension.

See Also

Concepts

Testing and Debugging Rules Extensions
Rules Extensions Examples
Creating Rules Extensions