Viewing and interpreting service component event log files

This topic discusses how you would interpret the information in a log file generated by service component monitoring. You can view the log files in the log viewer on the administrative console, or in a separate text file editor of your choice.

Events fired to the logger by service component monitoring are encoded in Common Base Event format. When published to a log file, the event is included as a single, lengthy line of text in XML tagging format, which also includes several logger-specific fields. Consult the event catalog section of this documentation for details on deciphering the Common Base Event coding of the logged event. Use this section to understand the other fields contained in each entry of the log file, and how the format you chose for the log file when you configured the logger is structured.

Basic and advanced format fields

Logging output can be directed either to a file or to an in-memory circular buffer. If trace output is directed to the in-memory circular buffer, it must be dumped to a file before it can be viewed. Output is generated as plain text in either basic, advanced or log analyzer format as specified by the user. The basic and advanced formats for output are like the basic and advanced formats that are available for the message logs. Basic and Advanced Formats use many of the same fields and formatting techniques. The fields that can be used in these formats include:

TimeStamp

The timestamp is formatted using the locale of the process where it is formatted. It includes a fully qualified date (YYMMDD), 24 hour time with millisecond precision and the time zone.

ThreadId

An 8-character hexadecimal value generated from the hash code of the thread that issued the trace event.

ThreadName

The name of the Java™ thread that issued the message or trace event.

ShortName

The abbreviated name of the logging component that issued the trace event. This is typically the class name for IBM® Business Process Manager internal components, but can be some other identifier for user applications.

LongName

The full name of the logging component that issued the trace event. This is typically the fully qualified class name for IBM Business Process Manager internal components, but can be some other identifier for user applications.

EventType

A one-character field that indicates the type of the trace event. Trace types are in lowercase. Possible values include:

1: a trace entry of type fine or event.
2: a trace entry of type finer.
3: a trace entry of type finest, debug, or dump.
Z: a placeholder to indicate that the trace type was not recognized.

ClassName

The class that issued the message or trace event.

MethodName

The method that issued the message or trace event.

Organization

The organization that owns the application that issued the message or trace event.

Product

The product that issued the message or trace event.

Component

The component within the product that issued the message or trace event.

Basic format

Trace events displayed in basic format use the following format:

<timestamp><threadId><shortName><eventType>[className][methodName]<textmessage>
               [parameter 1]
               [parameter 2]

Advanced format

Trace events displayed in advanced format use the following format:

<timestamp><threadId><eventType><UOW><source=longName>[className][methodName]
<Organization><Product><Component>[thread=threadName]
<textMessage>[parameter 1=parameterValue][parameter 2=parameterValue]

Log analyzer format

Specifying the log analyzer format allows you to open trace output using the Log Analyzer tool, which is an application included with WebSphere® Application Server. This is useful if you are trying to correlate traces from two different server processes, because it allows you to use the merge capability of the Log Analyzer.