Sometimes, you might need to run a full WCF trace (on both the IIS web service, and the client).
The XML in this article will do that and discuss how to view it.

<pre>
&lt;configuration&gt;
   &lt;system.diagnostics&gt;
      &lt;sources&gt;
            &lt;source name="System.ServiceModel"
                    switchValue="Information, ActivityTracing"
                    propagateActivity="true"&gt;
            &lt;listeners&gt;
               &lt;add name="traceListener"
                   type="System.Diagnostics.XmlWriterTraceListener"
                   initializeData= "c:logTraces.svclog" /&gt;
            &lt;/listeners&gt;
         &lt;/source&gt;
      &lt;/sources&gt;
   &lt;/system.diagnostics&gt;
&lt;/configuration&gt;

</pre>

You can view the file in XML, but it can be a little ugly.

Microsoft has provided a free utility called SVCTraceViewer.exe.
To get this utility, unfortunatley you have to download the Windows developers toolkit.
After you install, it can be found in this directory:
“c:Program FilesMicrosoft SDKsWindowsv6.0ABinSvcTraceViewer.exe”

How to download SvcTraceViewer.exe
Unfortunately, you can not just download the utility standalone.
No, the only way (as far that I know of) to have it, is to install the .NET SDK. The latest version of this SDK is 6.1 and is called ‘Windows SDK for Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5’.

This is a huge install. First you have to download a 1,29 GB .ISO on http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e6e1c3df-a74f-4207-8586-711ebe331cdc&DisplayLang=en. After burning it to DVD or mounting it with a ISO mounting tool (like http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html) or running UltraIso or something to turn it into regulary disk files, you can start the setup. To have SvcTraceViewer.exe you only need to select Developer Tools .NET Development Tools.

You can double click to run it, and it opens a Windows program.
You simply open the trace log file you captured above, and it formats it beautifully, with errors in red, and warnings in yellow. You can still see the full XML if you want (for example to copy it to clipboard, a MSDN Forum Post, or an email).