Adding logging and tracing to your application

You can add logging and tracing to applications to help analyze performance and diagnose problems in WebSphere® Application Server.

Deprecated feature: The JRas framework that is described in this documentation is deprecated. However, you can achieve the same results with Java™ logging.

About this task

Designers and developers of applications that run with or under WebSphere Application Server, such as servlets, JavaServer Pages (JSP) files, enterprise beans, client applications, and their supporting classes, might find it useful to use Java logging for generating their application logging.

This approach has advantages over adding System.out.println statements to your code:

Your messages are displayed in the WebSphere Application Server standard log files, using a standard message format with additional data, such as a date and time stamp that are added automatically.
You can more easily correlate problems and events in your own application to problems and events that are associated with WebSphere Application Server components.
You can use the WebSphere Application Server log file management features.
You can view your messages with the Log and Trace Analyzer tool.

Procedure

Enable and configure any of the supported types of logging as needed. Use one of the following methods:
Customize the properties to meet your logging needs.
For example, enable or disable a particular log, specify the number of logs to be kept, and specify a format for log output.
- Configure Java logging with the administrative console.
If you do not want log and trace from Jakarta Commons Logging to use the WebSphere log and trace infrastructure, reconfigure the Jakarta Commons Logging.
- Configure applications to use Jakarta Commons Logging.
Best practice: Use the WebSphere log and trace infrastructure for all of your log content to make problem source identification simpler.
Restart the application server after making static configuration changes.

Example

The sample security policy that follows grants access to the file system and runtime classes. Include this security policy, with the entry permission java.util.logging.LoggingPermission "control", in the META-INF directory of your application if you want your applications to programmatically alter controlled properties of loggers and handlers. The META-INF file is located in the following locations for the different module types:

Project name	Location
EJB projects	ejbModule/META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
Application client projects	appClientModule/META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
Dynamic web projects	WebContent/META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
Connector projects	connectorModule/META-INF/MANIFEST.MF

The following example security policy grants permission to modify logging properties:

//////////////////////////////////////////////////
//
// WebSphere Application Server Security Policy
//
//////////////////////////////////////////////////

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Allow all access to the file system and runtime classes
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
grant codeBase "file:${application}" {
   permission java.util.logging.LoggingPermission "control";
};