Noah, I am in the midst of building a facility based on log4j which handles auditing, tracing, performance and chargeback records. The key is to note that the sets of categories appropriate to each of these activities may differ and that simple text records are rarely sufficient.
I have made extensive use of the Renderer capability which is tersely described in the documentation. In addition, I have specialized the the Category class so that each specialized form accepts only objects of a specific class (or instances of descendents). In addition, when category trees are created, their names are prefixed with the activity (auditing etc.) for which thy are used. I have found log4 (j&cpp) to be a pretty good base on which to build. The Java version is distinctly stronger than the C++ version but that, I trust, reflects the fact that it is early days for the C++ implementation. The thing which made me a log4 user was changing my question from "Can log4 do what I need" to "How must I extend log4 to do what I need". Once I asked the right question, the answer was blindingly obvious. Hope this helps, Burton Burton Leathers Software Architect The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization. Ralph Waldo Emerson -----Original Message----- From: Noah Davis [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2001 1:54 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: using log4J for auditing? Still new to Log4J and I want to get an idea if it's really the right tool for what I need. In some respects it's spot on - I need to be able to log exceptions at different priorities and categories. ok, so far so good. However, there's another requirement which is somewhat different, and that's an auditing requirement. Correctly or not, I consider auditing, at least of the kind I need, to be a separate kind of activity than exception logging for 2 reasons: 1. There is no priority concept for auditing. Or, if you'd like, auditing is all of level "info" - but there's no need to distinguish between one kind of auditing and another in terms of priority. 2. At least in the system I'd be working with, exceptions are just exceptions which don't differ much as far as the information stored (message, time, stack trace, etc), but one audit trail may differ widely from another. For example, in a brokerage system, an audit record for a buy order will differ significantly from an audit record for a customer registering on the system. This information would also need to be captured relationally (I know log4j has some jdbc appenders) Where log4J would still come in handy is in its configuration of categories. The ability to turn on and off audit trails (a requirement of the system) could probably be handled through log4j's configuration of categories. However, given the differences, does log4j still make sense for auditing? In Paul Glezen's article "Adding conversion characters to patternlayout" he extends 6 classes just to log some new information -- if auditing has a heavy "information extension" requirement, perhaps log4j doesn't fit the bill in this case. Thanks for any thoughts on this. Noah __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Find the one for you at Yahoo! Personals http://personals.yahoo.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> This message may contain privileged and/or confidential information. If you have received this e-mail in error or are not the intended recipient, you may not use, copy, disseminate, or distribute it; do not open any attachments, delete it immediately from your system and notify the sender by e-mail promptly that you have done so. Thank You. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
