A Multitier Debugger for Web Applications

Manuel Serrano

2014

Abstract

Debugging Web applications is difficult because of their distributed nature but also because of the programming languages and tools commonly used to develop them. Taking benefit of the multitier aspect of the Hop programming language, we have built a new debugger for Web applications that copes with the server-side and the client-side of the executions. Its advantage over most debuggers for the Web is that it reports the full stack trace containing all the server-side and client-side frames that have conducted to an error. An error is reported on its actual position on the source code, wherever it occurs on the server or on the client. To help detecting errors as early as possible, the Hop debugger is accompanied with a debugging execution mode where types are checked before data structures are accessed, argument numbers are verified before functions are called, and array bounds are checked before vectors are accessed. Combining the debugger and the debugging mode makes errors of Web applications easier to understand and easier to localize. Hopefully they also become easier to fix.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Serrano M. (2014). A Multitier Debugger for Web Applications . In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: WEBIST, ISBN 978-989-758-023-9, pages 5-16. DOI: 10.5220/0004790600050016

in Bibtex Style

@conference{webist14,
author={Manuel Serrano},
title={A Multitier Debugger for Web Applications},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: WEBIST,},
year={2014},
pages={5-16},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0004790600050016},
isbn={978-989-758-023-9},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: WEBIST,
TI - A Multitier Debugger for Web Applications
SN - 978-989-758-023-9
AU - Serrano M.
PY - 2014
SP - 5
EP - 16
DO - 10.5220/0004790600050016