When things aren't going your way, it is very important to have good tools to debug processes and their interaction with external entities, as well as have powerful supporting tools to mimic parts of the process execution.
This chapter will cover details of the tools, resources, and techniques that I have found to be very useful.
The RapidMiner Studio GUI has a very easy-to-use debugging facility. It is possible to add a breakpoint to any operator that will display results on completion of the operation. A breakpoint is enabled by selecting the operator and pressing the F7 key. A right-click brings up a menu as an alternative way of doing this and it can be accessed from the Edit menu of the main GUI. When the process execution reaches the breakpoint, all the outputs from the operator can be examined to determine what is happening.
It is also possible to set a breakpoint before the execution of the operator. Again, select the operator and now press Shift + F7 to set this type of breakpoint. This time all the inputs to the operator can be examined.
To continue from a breakpoint, press the Run button, or press F1, or use the Process menu from the main GUI.
A neat feature is the ability to change the value of a macro when a breakpoint has been reached so that the subsequent operators can use this value. This is done by displaying the Macros view and simply making the change to the macro value at the breakpoint and resuming the process. It is also possible to make changes to the process itself by selecting the operator that is to be executed and changing the parameters and even connections; however, this can get difficult to follow.