WebFOCUS Tracing Enhancements

By Nancy Silva-Howell

In WebFOCUS 7 administrators have a central place in the WebFOCUS Administration Console to set, view, refresh, and delete traces for different WebFOCUS components.

By centralizing and streamlining the WebFOCUS traces and logs, administrators and developers will be able to pinpoint and debug problems faster.

The following WebFOCUS traces are available via the WebFOCUS Administration Console:

	CGI
	GIS
	Graph
	HTML Tools
	NLS
	OLAP
	WebServices
	WFAPI
	WFServlet

The following WebFOCUS logs are available via the WebFOCUS Administration Console:

	Business Intelligence Dashboard
	Managed Reporting Realm Driver
	WebFOCUS procedures

Additionally, trace file formats have been made consistent and more informative to help determine the sequence of events and which components were called in each request:

<sequence number>_<component>_
<subcomponent>_<timestamp>.trace

A new sequence number is generated with every trace file that gets created and helps determine the order of processing when reviewing traces for more than one component. The sequence begins with 00100.

The WebFOCUS component making the request follows the sequence number. If the component subsequently calls any other areas of WebFOCUS, it is reflected by the subcomponent. Example:

00100_WFServlet_WFAPI_050504_
152844.trace

This example can be interpreted as "A request was made via the WFServlet, which then called into the WebFOCUS API on May 4, 2005 at 3:28."

The following WebFOCUS components generate log files:

	BI Dashboard
	Managed Reporting Realm Driver
	WebFOCUS procedures

Log file formats have also been changed and have the following format:

<component>_<userid or
subcomponent>_<date>_<time>.log

Log files do not contain sequence numbers since the information is appended to the file on a daily basis or by user (Dashboard). The following WebFOCUS components generate log files:

	BI Dashboard
	Managed Reporting Realm Driver
	WebFOCUS procedures

Enabling Traces

All WebFOCUS traces and logs are available via the WebFOCUS Administration Console. Administrators can view, enable, disable and delete traces while developers can view and delete traces. To enable traces, administrators need to access the component under the Traces menu for which they would like to set the traces.

When traces and logs are generated, they are viewable from the same panel in which they were enabled. All trace files are written to the directory path specified by the TRACE_LOCATION parameter available via the Startup Parameter section under the Configuration menu. The initial value at installation time is {install_drive}:\ibi\WebFOCUS71\ logs. However, if the value is blank, trace files are written to {install_drive}:\ibi\WebFOCUS71\ client 71 \wfc\web\cgi.

Procedure logs have been redesigned and no longer use the SAVE_FEX parameter under the general settings in the configuration menu. In earlier releases, administrators had to update the SAVE_FEX parameter to provide a filename and then navigate to the traces section of the diagnostics menu to view the log. In WebFOCUS 7.1, this process has been consolidated into one step.

When procedure logs are enabled or disabled, the WebFOCUS Administration Console automatically updates the PROCEDURE_LOG parameter in the Startup Parameters section of the configuration menu simultaneously.

Many other changes were made to ensure that the new tracing facility provides a consistent and easy-to-use way of handling WebFOCUS traces and logs. The table shown in Figure 1 summarizes the changes made in the WebFOCUS Administration Console's tracing facility. And remember, enabling traces/logs can significantly impact WebFOCUS' performance so it is recommended only for troubleshooting.