Debugging on Remote server
For a developer,to troubleshooting problem, he always needs to debug the problem. In complex infrastructure application, where you can not have every component of your application on your machine, it becomes a nightmare to troubleshoot problem.
Remote debugging is one of the appraoch, you can use to troubleshoot problem. Whole process will be executing on remote server and you can have step-by-step info on your workstation. You just need to have the source code of the same.. here is some brief article which tells solution for remote debugging on various popular J2EE Application Servers like Websphere, Weblogic, JBoss etc.
Websphere & RAD Debugging -- Document is owned by me and hosted by scricbd.
Jboss & Eclipse Setting for Remote Debugging - nice article by Deepak Vohra
Remote Debugging Setup for Weblogic - again a good article by Deepak Vohra
Basic idea is, this is Java feature which enforce Java runtime to generate these information while executing your class. It will generate information like Which Java File, What line Number and the values of variable at that particular step.
You will notice that in start script for server, all of these solution supplies following Java Options:
-Xdebug -Xnoagent -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,address=8787,server=y,suspend=n
You can see the port number information supplied eg 8787 in above line. For more information use java command line tool to understand these options in depth.
Its a good experience though to debug remotely. I have used this approach for Weblogic Server as well as Websphere Application Server. Caution should be taken while putting debug point, as it will block the functioning of the server for all users. So better 'Be Alert!!!'.
Hope this would help you.