On 2005-01-24 19:39:06 Richard Sitze wrote:
>1. It's not indiscriminate logging. That's why we call it tracing, and >that's why the logging impls [such as Log4J] allow us to turn it on/off. > >2. The fact of the matter is that in many corporate operational >environments, production-level [that's *not* development] systems are >guarded carefully. Installing additional components [debuggers], never >MIND running them, is not an option. When one fails to duplicate a >problem in a development environment, customers *expect* us to be able to >glean information from productions system that can demonstrate the >problems.
I was not suggesting the use of debuggers at all, not one bit. When you attempt to log everything, then logging can be abstractly viewed as a persistent debugger.
>3. Are your pokes/jabs at me for being an IBM employee necessary? I've >spent 2/5 of my career at IBM. When I exceed 1/2, you come on back and >I'll listen to you more seriously.
No jabs at you personally. I am an ex-IBM employee. Some of the IBM products we struggled with at the time generated so much log output that I still vividly recall the frustration. The lesson from that experience:
Too much logging can as bad as the absence of logging.
>My goal is to be an advocate of the technologies and techniques I see that >can benefit the community. I *will* argue for what I believe to be in the >best interest of the development community. And when the decisions are >made, I will support them. That's the stance I take with my employer: >defending open-source decisions that I may not agree with. > >That I am tainted by my experience, environment, etc., is a fact of life.. >and part of the process. It's the strength of open source development. >It's why we have developers from many backgrounds make up our community. >Why do you want to make that a negative?
Having personally experienced the negative effects of the approach advocated by IBM, I am trying to warn to community. However, you and IBM have every right to advocate your point of view. I sincerely apologize if my comments came across as disparaging IBM or you personally, that was not my intention.
>I claim that entry/exit at class/method is reasonable.. along with other >best-practices I've described in other notes. > >It's easily identifiable, it's convenient, it's easy to automate [AspectJ >or other tooling], and more importantly it's *useful*. Should it stop >there? No. Is it a reasonable, and easily understood, starting point for >instrumenting code with logging? Yes.
You can go overboard with logging. Method entry/exit logs happens to be convenient and easy way of generating tons of garbage. :-)
>I've personally been in situations where the errors could not be >duplicated "in the lab". Differences in hardware, and in the particular >case in my mind, even to the extent of different revisions of firmware on >otherwise similar systems introduce variable that are not always easily >comprehended.
Instead of instrument every copy of your application, you can instrument a special version to identify the problem on that special environment. Once the problem is identified, you move on. There is no need to pollute every copy of your application.
-- Ceki Gülcü
The complete log4j manual: http://www.qos.ch/log4j/
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