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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LOG4J2-1630?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=15557009#comment-15557009
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Ralph Goers commented on LOG4J2-1630:
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Remko, I see you noticed that this issue is very much related to LOG4J2-1137.
The main difference is that 1137 proposes just printing the last n log events
when a trigger occurs while this issues treats logging more like a set of
related database operations. On one hand, I like this approach as it
purportedly will only log events related to what is "in scope". On the other
hand, it is quite likely that the unit of work could be impacted by something
happening in some other unit of work, so not including those logs could mean
not being able to see the real problem. In addition, it requires the
application to say when the unit of work is "done" rather than being able to
configure something that just triggers the logging to occur.
To be honest, I am having a hard time figuring out where I would want to use
this as described. However, I could easily see modifying the configuration you
show to do what I want, although I wouldn't call it a unit of work - it is just
the last n events to occur before the trigger fires. Of course, the missing
piece is the actual trigger. I would want to specify that in the configuration,
not in the code.
> Unit of Work Logging
> --------------------
>
> Key: LOG4J2-1630
> URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LOG4J2-1630
> Project: Log4j 2
> Issue Type: Story
> Components: API, Core, Filters
> Affects Versions: 2.7
> Reporter: Remko Popma
> Fix For: 2.8
>
>
> h3. Intent
> Provide a way to filter log events, where the decision on whether to discard
> the message or actually log them cannot be made until after the application
> has already logged the message.
> h3. Motivation
> In many systems, particularly event processing applications, log files
> contain a lot of repetitive log messages. Suppose an application needs to do
> some calculation to decide whether or not to react to some event, and a lot
> of detail is logged during this calculation. Imagine that 99% of the time,
> the application decides to take no action. Once the application arrived at
> that conclusion it would be nice if we could go back and undo all the
> detailed logging and print a summary instead. When the application _does_
> decide to take some action, however, we _do_ want the detailed log messages.
> A Unit of Work for logging would allow us to group a set of log messages and
> either discard them or log them together. (Inspired by Martin Fowler's [Unit
> of Work|http://martinfowler.com/eaaCatalog/unitOfWork.html] pattern.)
> This should result in log files where a lot of the "uninteresting" logging is
> filtered out, significantly reducing the amount of data logged.
> Some applications do this in an ad hoc manner, for example by passing a
> Collection to its components, where these components can add log message
> strings to this Collection. When the discard/retain decision is made, the
> application then either clears the Collection or logs the contents of the
> Collection. This works, but having to pass the Collection down the component
> tree is clunky and the result often omits details like logger name, timestamp
> and other details that come for free with normal logging. Log4j can provide a
> reusable and less intrusive way to accomplish this.
> h3. How it works
> There would need to be some API for the application to mark the _start_ of
> the unit of work, and some API to signal whether the log messages that are
> part of that unit of work need to be _discarded_ or _logged_ (retained).
> Not all logging that occurs after a unit of work was started is part of that
> unit of work. The application may want some messages to be logged regardless
> of whether the unit of work was discarded or not. There needs to be a
> flexible way (or multiple ways) to include or exclude logging statements from
> the unit of work.
> The application may also designate multiple units of work, which may be
> sequential, nested or partially overlapping. Each unit of work may define its
> own rules for which log messages are considered included in or excluded from
> the unit of work.
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