Process Dump Tool Concepts

By dumping the state of a COM+ application to a designated directory at the time of failure, the process dump tool allows the administrator to simplify the developer's task of debugging of the application. The following are examples of failure scenarios:

• An application hangs and becomes unresponsive to the client.
  
  
• An application causes an exception and is terminated by the COM+ runtime.
  
  
• An application fails.

In all of these scenarios, the process dump feature allows you to dump the entire process state at the time of the failure, enabling a more efficient debugging of application failures.

You can dump the files to any computer—not necessarily the one running the application. In addition, the COM+ catalog on the application's computer can be configured to write the dump file to any computer that is accessible over the network. The application can then be debugged offline.

For step-by-step instructions on enabling process dump, see Enabling Process Dump.

For step-by-step instructions on disabling process dump, see Disabing Process Dump.