WindDBG : load right extensions

In order to debug .NET applications, Microsoft provides a tool called WinDBG available in “Windows SDK”.

WinDBG is a native debugger and need additional extensions to work with .NET application. These extensions are different based on technology and .NET version  (Silverlight / WPF / .NET 2.0 / .NET 4, etc.).

SOS

SOS.dll (Son Of Strike) is a DLL provided by .NET Framework and is available in folder :

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\

The DLL loading is slightly different if your application is a classic .NET 4 application or Silverlight application. Actually Silverlight uses only a subset of .NET Framework based on coreclr.dll and not clr.dll (mscorwks.dll for .NET 2.0). The extension module to load is not the same (clr for .NET 4 and coreclr for Silverlight).

Use Visual Studio debugger in client side partial classes created on WCF proxy

In application using WCF service, it is not uncommon to create partial classes on client side in order to add properties on objects retrieved by the service. Theses properties are needed by the client application (for interface for example) and they have no reason to present on server side.

For instance, a class name Product has following properties defined on server side : Price, Name, Stock and has the property IsVisible defined on client side in order to display or not the product on UI. Methods can also be defined in these partial classes.