To step through a top-level service, you must have Execute, Read, and List access to the service. To step through all the services within a top-level service, you must have Execute, List, and Read access to all services that the top-level service invokes.

If the debug launch configuration is not configured to stop at the first flow step or there is not an enabled breakpoint in the flow service or one of its child services, Designer will execute the service to completion and will not suspend at any flow step.

When you step through a flow step, Designer executes the step and then suspends the debug session.

Debug to Here skips all the breakpoints and stops execution at the selected step based on the execution path, else execution completes.

The Variables view displays the pipeline that will be passed to the next step in the flow service. You can modify, save, or restore the data while debugging the service.

If you step over a flow step that contains an enabled breakpoint, Designer suspends service execution at the breakpoint.

When you run a flow service in debug mode, Designer considers every Run, Step Into, and Step Over action to be a new service execution. When running a service in debug mode, the service execution ends when Designer encounters a breakpoint or the flow terminates. For a step command such as Step Into and Step Over, the service execution starts and end with each step command.

Debugging a flow service that performs an asynchronous request/reply where Universal Messaging is the messaging provider has some unique considerations due to the nature of debugging in Designer and the request/reply channel that the publishing service uses to retrieve an asynchronous reply. For more information, see the Publish-Subscribe Developer’s Guide.