By default, Intercept Studio does not collect parameters or member variables if they have a null value. This is because, typically, seeing a null value is not critical while examining the root cause details of application problems. However, if you are struggling with a System.NullReferenceException or System.ArgumentNullException issue, collecting null values may be critical to successfully diagnosing and troubleshooting the problem.

Enabling Intercept Studio to collect null values is simple. First, update the agent configuration file, PMonitor.config, by adding the following item to the "options section": <ss:emptyObjects print="true" />. Then save the configuration file and restart the application. That's it - you're on your way to resolving the null reference or argument exception.

ASP.NET health monitoring is an easy way to monitor the health of deployed web applications and to gather information related to the health status and performance characteristics of instrumented applications.

What happens, though, when an ASP.NET health monitoring event does not contain the root cause diagnostics related to isolate and resolve an exception? It's a situation AVIcode encounters with organizations quite often, even those companies that are .NET experts and masters at configuring ASP.NET health monitoring.

We recently came across this situation with a security problem that remained undiagnosed by ASP.NET health monitoring. Because the application was already in production, re-configuring health monitoring and modifying the application code was not a reasonable option. Rather, the organization chose to install Intercept Studio.

The following screenshot depicts a typical exception event, similar to what this organization was able to collect, for the security failure. All runtime information, including the call stack, page and user details, parameters passed, custom user code methods, and additional details throughout the exception chain are provided to ensure rapid problem identification, triage and resolution.

In the case of the security problem this particular organization was encountering, Intercept Studio also provided the resource name, failed action details and security context.

The following screenshot shows the event details for a more sophisticated security issue which occurred within the SQL server executing a stored procedure that caused the application code to fail. 

The fact is, it is not possible to be always-prepared for any problem that can occur. And, problems do occur. When instrumentation is not enough, and when modifying in-production code is not an option, a low-overhead solution like Intercept Studio can be implemented on-the-fly to monitor the application state and speed problem resolution by clearly showing you what is going wrong and why.