8.2 Configuring Forms Trace

An event is something that happens inside Oracle Forms as a direct or indirect result of a user action. An event set specifies a group of events that you can trace simply by specifying the event set name rather than each event number individually when you start the trace.

Use the Forms Trace Configuration selection in the Configuration tab of Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Application Server Control Console Forms page to define the events that you want to trace. This page manages all changes in the ftrace.cfg file for you.

Keep these items in mind when working with Forms Trace:

• If you first switch off trace, and then switch it on again with new settings, then trace is enabled with the new trace group.

• In order to trace Forms Processes on Windows, the Process Manager Service needs to have the check box "Allow service to interact with the desktop" selected. When this is not set, attempting to switch on Trace will result in the error: oracle.sysman.emSDK.emd.comm.RemoteOperationException. Check the User Name and Password.

• Backup the formsweb.cfg and default.env files before editing them with Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Application Server Control Console.

• As with most Web applications, it is easy to lose unsaved changes by switching pages. Be sure to save any changes you make through Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Application Server Control Console to Forms configuration, trace, or environment files before proceeding to other pages.

  The length of time it takes for changes to be saved is affected by the number of lines you have changed. For example, an additional fifty lines of comments will take longer to save than just the deletion of a single entry.

• If you manually edit any of the configuration or environment files, you'll need to restart Enterprise Manager as well as restart all Distributed Configuration Management (DCM) processes so that Enterprise Manager can read all changes. If you do not restart Enterprise Manager as well as DCM processes, any changes that you make through Enterprise Manager will overwrite any manual changes you've made to these files. These DCM processes include:

  • emctl stop agent

  • emctl stop em

  • dcmctl stop

  • opmnctl stopall

  • opmnctl startall

  • dcmctl start

  • emctl start agent

  • emctl start em

See Section 8.5, "List of Traceable Events" for a list of events and their corresponding event numbers.

To configure Forms Trace: 

1. Start the Enterprise Manager Application Server Control Console.

2. From the Enterprise Manager Application Server Control Console main page, select the link to the Forms Services instance that you want to configure.

3. From the Overview page for the Forms Services instance, select the Configuration link.

To create a new parameter in the ftrace.cfg file: 

• Enter a Name and Value for this new parameter and click Add New Parameter at the bottom of the page.

To delete a parameter in the ftrace.cfg file: 

• Click the radio button next to the parameter to be deleted, then click Delete. Confirm the deletion on the next page.

To edit an existing parameter in the ftrace.cfg file: 

• Select the radio button next to it, and modify the values in the text areas. Click Apply to save your changes.

To save your changes: 

• Click the radio button next to a parameter, then click Apply.

Figure 8-1 is a sample ftrace.cfg configuration file where three event sets have been specified.

Figure 8-1 Configuring Trace Events in Enterprise Manager

Note the following if you are manually editing ftrace.cfg:

• There must be a blank line between keyword entries.

• An Event group can have any name as long as they do not contain spaces. For example, a_b_c is an acceptable keyword.

• There must be a comma between each event number.

• You can use a range of numbers

When you start the trace, you can specify tracegroup = "custom1" on the command line, which is equivalent to specifying tracegroup = "32-46, 65, 66, 96, 194"

8.2.1 Specifying URL Parameter Options

The following command line parameters are used to configure Forms Trace:

Tracegroup =   
Log = <filename> 

Table 8-1 describes the parameter values:

Table 8-1 Forms Trace Command Line Parameters

Parameter	Values	Description
Record	forms	Enables Forms Trace.
Tracegroup	Name, event number, or event range	Indicates which events should be recorded and logged. If Tracegroup is not specified, only error messages are collected. Tracegroup is ignored if Forms Trace is not switched on at the command line. You can create a named set of events using the Tracegroup keyword, for example Tracegroup=<keyword>, where <keyword> is specified in ftrace.cfg (for example, Tracegroup=MyEvents). This lets you log the events in the named set SQLInfo. You can log all events in a specified range using the Tracegroup keyword, for example Tracegroup = 0-3 This lets you log all events in the range defined by 0 <= event <=3. You can log individual events using the Tracegroup keyword, for example Tracegroup = 34,67 You can combine event sets using the Tracegroup keyword, for example Tracegroup = 0-3,34,67,SQLInfo
Log	Directory	Specifies where trace information is saved. Trace files must be saved to ORACLE_HOME/forms/trace for Enterprise Manager to find and process them correctly. If a directory is not specified, the file is written to the current working directory. If a log file is not specified, the process ID (PID) of the user process is used as the name of the trace file, for example, forms_<pid>.trc.