, 2021

2021 Breakout Sessions

Debugging Complex Issues in Web Applications

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Track: Intermediate/Advanced Spring

We’ve all seen issues that are hard to track down. You probably have a few in your backlog at the moment. The issue appears in a seemingly random manner with no obvious pattern of inputs that triggers the problem. The effects of the issue are obvious but the root cause, or causes, are elusive. Is the root cause in the application? A library the application is using? Apache Tomcat? The JVM? The OS? A networking issue? Somewhere else? How can you tackle issues like this?

In this session, Mark will use bug reports and user questions from the Apache Tomcat project to demonstrate the approach he’s been using to successfully tackle complex issues like these. He’ll also discuss what you can do to increase your chances of getting some free help from the open source community.

Although the examples in the session are focused on web applications, the techniques discussed are applicable to debugging complex issues in any application.

Mark Thomas

Staff Engineer
VMware