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Enterprise Logging for Distributed J2EE Applications
by Venkatray Kamath
As more and more enterprise applications are architected using the paradigm of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), new challenges surface at every stage of an application's evolution. One such challenge is the consistent requirement of application logging. While the very distributed nature of SOA systems complicate trouble-shooting, log files can come to your rescue when trying to understand a system's behavior. This article discusses our experience implementing logging in a Loan Origination System (LOS), built using SOA on the J2EE platform. Along the way, we hope to answer the following questions:
- How do you trace requests through Web-tier and business-tier logs in a distributed J2EE deployment model?
- In case of an application error, how does the end user report the problem to help desk and subsequently how does the development team correlate the reported error and troubleshoot the issue with the help of application logs.
Prerequisites
This article assumes that you are familiar with the basics of following frameworks:
- J2EE
- Log4j
- AOP and AspectJ
Definitions, Acronyms, and Abbreviations
You'll also need to be familiar with these terms in order to understand this article:
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Web
Tier
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The
servlet container in which JSPs and servlets get executed.
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Business
Tier
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This
tier deploys the EJB components that provide application services requested
by components in the Web
tier.
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J2EE
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Java
Version 2 Enterprise Edition as specified by Sun Microsystems
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SOA
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An
architecture pattern, Service Oriented Architecture
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SC
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Service
Component Ex. Loan Manager, Strip
Engine
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LRID
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Log
Reference ID, a unique value
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MDC
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Mapped
Diagnostic Contexts
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RMI
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Remote
Method Invocation
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AOP
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Aspect
Oriented Programming
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AspectJ
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AspectJ
is an implementation of aspect-oriented programming for Java
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