This happens from time to time: I received questions from Commerce Server community, asking about what is going wrong in the pipeline?

(some top questions include: Why my discounts do not apply? Why my basket pipeline can't execute? Why this advertisement shows up instead of the other, the one I want to show?)

And usually along with the question, the pipeline log file is attached.

However, the pipeline log file, sometimes, has very limited help. I would like to recommend a much more, way more, powerful troubleshooting tool: XmlTracer, which is avaialble to download in Commerce Server official website.

It may require some time to get used to this tool, you know, configure it (basically, it requires you to insert the XmlTracer component in the questionable location in the pipeline, save the pipeline, restart the IIS and run a couple of batch files to generate the log). But I can almost promise you that if you are bothered by pipeline, every second you spend learning the tool really worths it.

Let me know if you have any trouble using this troubleshooting tool. And if you want me to write some examples about how to use it to track down some problems.