Answered LOG-MANAGER Overhead

[WesleySmith]

Progress Version: 10.2B06

Hi All,

As part of our upgrade process we ask our customers to run with LOG-MANAGER enabled for the first couple of weeks after go-live.
The reason for this is when LOG-MANAGER is run with no entry types enabled it captures unexpected, Progress generated errors.
These logs are then returned to us so we can analyse the contents and investigate and fix any issues that they have had which were not identified during our QA testing phase.

This has proved to be very useful but we are now having internal discussions about whether LOG-MANAGER should just be left enabled permanently and one of the questions being asked is "What is the overhead of running LOG-MANAGER with no entry types enabled?"
If it is minimal we could let it run permanently but if its a larger overhead we may need to remain as we are.

Does anyone know the answer to this?

 

[RealHeavyDude]

We enable the logging with the LOG-MANAGER only on purpose in the production environment. In test environments it is enabled permanently. The reason for it is not so much performance itself than the amount of data generated and necessary house keeping for it.

We've built an option into the application start portal to have the user enable the logging when told to do so by the help desk.

Heavy Regard, RealHeavyDude.

 

[RealHeavyDude]

Forgot to add: Depending on what you are logging, sensitve information for which the user must take special responsiblity might end up in such a file on an unencrypted device without her/him being aware of it. This might very well be a security breach or data leak if you want to.

Heavy Regards, RealHeavyDude.

 

[WesleySmith]

RealHeavyDude,

Thanks for the reply.

We currently have a super-procedure which initializes when our application starts which deals with the LOG-MANAGER. At the moment LOG-MANAGER is only activated when the -logthreshold startup parameter is set.
The super-procedure also deals with the house keeping part by deleting log files for the user which are older than 5 days when they log in, so that parts taken care of.

I like the idea of enabling it on demand so will pursue that a little further.

 

[RealHeavyDude]

To enable it online you just need to assign the LOGFILE-NAME attribute of the LOG-MANAGER system handle. There is also a CLOSE-LOG ( ) method on it. You logging then can check whether the LOGFILE-NAME attribute returns a valid file and use the WRITE-MESSAGE ( ) method to output application specific errors to the log and / or a message box.

Heavy Regards, RealHeavyDude.