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We're encountering "silent" aborts when Windows Workflows (hosted in IIS) are persisted using SqlWorkflowInstanceStore.

According to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2022538 :

If the service is self-hosted or web-hosted, this issue creates a diagnostic trace. Additionally, exception errors and warnings are generated in the Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) trace log.

That article resolved our first issue (attempting to promote a Boolean property), but now we're encountering a new issue with identical symptoms. In order to diagnose it, we need to view these trace logs.

In every case, I am not seeing these logs in Event Viewer. It's very possible I'm not looking in the right place, or that I have to enable something first.

  • How can I view these logs?
  • (Bonus question) How can I subscribe to the diagnostic trace in a workflow?
  • (Bonus question 2) How can I view these logs if I am debugging the workflow in Visual Studio 2010 with the default web server (formerly Cassini)?
TrueWill
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1 Answers1

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The ETW Tracking Provider writes its logs to the Analytics log under Application Server-Applications. ETW Tracking Provider

You can add standard .NET tracing using a trace source with name "System.Activities". See here for an example config.

Now quite sure I understand the third question as viewing the logs is independent of the hosting application choosen.

Glorfindel
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Maurice
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  • Thank you! After I enabled the Analytic log it's logging what appears to be irrelevant data, but adding a textListener to the Web.config creates a log specific to the workflow. However, I'm not finding an InstancePersistenceException in either log when I replicate the promoted Boolean issue. The closest I've found is "InternalReceiveMessage ... has completed in the 'Faulted' state" (with no details). Any suggestions? – TrueWill Oct 29 '12 at 15:31
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    Try using System.Activities.DurableInstancing and System.Runtime.DurableInstancing as diagnostics trace source names. – Maurice Oct 29 '12 at 18:43
  • System.Activities.DurableInstancing worked. The issue was that DateTime.MinValue can't be used; dates must be year 1753 or later (SQL Server minimum). Thanks again. – TrueWill Oct 29 '12 at 20:55