Using WebLogic Logging Services for Application Logging

Introduction and Roadmap

This section describes the contents and organization of this guide—Using WebLogic Logging Services.

Document Scope and Audience

This document describes how you use BEA WebLogic Server® logging services to monitor application events. It describes WebLogic support for internationalization and localization of log messages, and shows you how to use the templates and tools provided with WebLogic Server to to create or edit message catalogs that are locale-specific.

This document is a resource for J2EE application developers who want to use WebLogic message catalogs and logging services as a way for their applications to produce log messages and want to integrate their application logs with WebLogic Server logs. This document is relevant to all phases of a software project, from development through test and production phases.

This document does not address how you configure logging, subscribe to and filter log messages. For links to information on these topics, see Related Documentation.

It is assumed that the reader is familiar with J2EE and Web technologies, object-oriented programming techniques, and the Java programming language.

Guide to This Document

The document is organized as follows:

This chapter, Introduction and Roadmap, describes the scope of this guide and lists related documentation.
Application Logging and WebLogic Logging Services, discusses how to use WebLogic logging services to monitor application events.
Internationalization and Localization for WebLogic Server, summarizes the processes required for internationalization and localization.
Using Message Catalogs with WebLogic Server, describes message catalog types, message definitions, elements, and arguments.
Writing Messages to the WebLogic Server Log, describes how to create and use message catalogs and how to use the NonCatalogLogger class to write log messages.
Using the WebLogic Server Message Editor, explains how to use the Message Editor that is included with WebLogic Server.
Using the WebLogic Server Internationalization Utilities, explains how to use the internationalization utilities included with WebLogic Server.
Localizer Class Reference for WebLogic Server, describes Localizer classes, Localizer methods, key values for Localizers, and lookup properties for Localizers.
Loggable Object Reference for WebLogic Server, describes loggable objects and how they are used.
TextFormatter Class Reference for WebLogic Server, provides an example of an application that uses a TextFormatter class.
Logger Class Reference for WebLogic Server, describes Logger classes and provides an example of a message catalog and its corresponding Logger class.

Logging Samples and Tutorials

In addition to this document, BEA Systems provides a variety of logging code samples and tutorials that show logging configuration and API use.

Avitek Medical Records Application (MedRec) and Tutorials

MedRec is an end-to-end sample J2EE application shipped with WebLogic Server that simulates an independent, centralized medical record management system. The MedRec application provides a framework for patients, doctors, and administrators to manage patient data using a variety of different clients.

MedRec demonstrates WebLogic Server and J2EE features, and highlights BEA-recommended best practices. MedRec is included in the WebLogic Server distribution, and can be accessed from the Start menu on Windows machines. For Linux and other platforms, you can start MedRec from the WL_HOME\samples\domains\medrec directory, where WL_HOME is the top-level installation directory for WebLogic Server.

Logging Examples in the WebLogic Server Distribution

WebLogic Server 9.0 optionally installs API code examples in WL_HOME\samples\server\examples\src\examples, where WL_HOME is the top-level directory of your WebLogic Server installation. You can start the examples server, and obtain information about the samples and how to run them from the WebLogic Server 9.0 Start menu.

Internationalizing Applications Using Simple Message Catalogs Example

This example shows various methods for displaying localized text using simple message catalogs. Using any of the languages supported by the example requires the appropriate operating system localization software and character encoding. The package that contains this example is:

java examples.i18n.simple.HelloWorld [lang [country]]

where lang is a two-character ISO language code (for example, en for English) and country is a two-character ISO country code (for example, US for the United States).

The files are located in WL_HOME\samples\server\examples\src\examples\i18n\simple, where WL_HOME is the top-level directory of your WebLogic Server installation. The default path is c:\bea\weblogic90, however, you are not required to install this directory under BEA_HOME.

New and Changed Application Logging Features in This Release

In this release of WebLogic Server, you can configure Web application and resource adapter logging behavior using WebLogic-specific deployment descriptors. The logging configuration deployment descriptor elements define similar attributes used to configure server logging through the LogFileMBean interface, such as the log file name, location, and rotation policy.

Similarly, WebLogic logging services are provided to J2EE resource adapters for ManagedConnectionFactory scoped logging. You configure the log file name, location, and rotation policy for resource adapter logs through the weblogic-ra.xml deployment descriptor.