You can test your message flows in a development environment and identify and fix issues before you deploy the message flows to a production environment. You can also add Trace nodes to your message flows to help you troubleshoot a message flow after it is deployed to a production environment.
You must have a basic understanding of message flows and their representation in the IBM® Integration Toolkit. See Message flows overview.
You can use the Flow Exerciser to deploy your message flow and then create and send messages to the flow. After the messages are processed, the paths that the messages took are highlighted. You can then view the structure and content of the logical message tree on any highlighted connection in the message flow. See Testing your message flow by using the Flow Exerciser. You might use the Flow Exerciser when you want to check the operation of a message flow.
You can enable user trace to show the history of processing that is carried out in a particular message flow. Built-in nodes write messages to user trace when they are processing work. You can use these messages to review the activity in a message flow and show information such as which message flow nodes were invoked, what code the nodes ran, and through which terminals the messages were sent. See Testing your message flow by enabling user trace.
You can use Trace nodes to write out your own debugging information at specific points in the message flow. The debugging information is written to a file, to user trace, or to the system log. You can review the information after the message flow processes one or more messages. See Testing your message flow by adding Trace nodes. You might add Trace nodes to your message flow during development so that, when your flow is deployed in production, you can get additional information if you use user trace to troubleshoot your flow.