Debugging an issue on the QA server

Question

I have an asp.net web application that is not writing to the database in QA. It works fine on the dev server. My code goes from aspx.cs to .cs class object and then writing to a database table.

• There is no error thrown (in try catch blocks)
• Remote debugging is not an option due to permissions

Any ideas on how I can go about debugging this issue?

Answer 1

Here are a few things that come to mind:

• Check the event log. If .NET throws an unhandled Exception, you will find some details there.
• Manually verify the connection string using SQL Server Management Studio (log in with the exact credentials specified in the connection string, and switch to the specified initial database if any) or a small test program.
• Use a logging framework such as NLog to judiciously log errors in the code.