Software Engineering

Enterprise Library 6, Semantic Logging, Part 4 advantages, customising

June 10, 2013 20:05

This post continues on from part 3:

Enterprise Library 6, Semantic Logging, Part 3, Getting into the details

In-process / out of process logging
Again, here’s the diagrams showing the difference between in-process and out-of-process logging. (Taken from the EL6 documentation)

In-Process

OUT-OF-PROCESS

As soon as performance in your logging is required, out-of-process should be used. If you use out-of-process though, deployment of your application is more complicated, 2 separate applications are then required for each target host. (SLAB OUT-OF-PROCESS service must run on the same host as the event sources)

Advantages compared to Enterprise Library Logging Block

live configuration, trace tuning without restarting web apps in the IIS (by OUT-OF-PROCESS)
high performance logging
OUT-OF-PROCESS and distributed software systems support
easy to configure in OUT-OF-PROCESS
no unity dependency
Complicated Logging configuration is no longer required and the web.config, app.config is almost free from EL configurations
Application is free from listeners (OUT-OF-PROCESS)
Active logging/IT planning when implementing the tracing, logging systems, instead of log analysis in the log Db after the application has been deployed
Easy to plan for logging, tracing, run-time diagnosis
Easy to extend source code
Easy to use KISS
Semantic logging and strongly typed events ensure that the structure of your log messages is known.

Disadvantages compared to Enterprise Library Logging Block

string categories filters are missing, replaced by keywords (int)
mapping required for keywords, tasks and opcodes
when using OUT-OF-PROCESS, it must be deployed to every client PC
Keywords are defined as a nested class inside the EventSource classes
No Windows EventLog support
No MSMQ support (Out of the box)

Customizing the Semantic Logging Application Block
(Taken from the EL docs)

The Semantic Logging Application Block provides a number of extension points that enable you to further customize its behavior. These extension points include:

Creating custom formatters for use both in-process and out-of-process.
Creating custom event listeners for use both in-process and out-of-process.
Creating a custom application to collect trace messages from your LOB applications.

Enterprise Library 6, Semantic Logging, Part 1, database listener
Enterprise Library 6, Semantic Logging, Part 2, OUT-OF-PROCESS
Enterprise Library 6, Semantic Logging, Part 3, Getting into the details

Links:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vancem/archive/2012/08/13/windows-high-speed-logging-etw-in-c-net-using-system-diagnostics-tracing-eventsource.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn170426%28v=pandp.60%29.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2013/08/09/announcing-the-eventsource-nuget-package-write-to-the-windows-event-log.aspx

Troubleshooting:
Microsoft-SemanticLogging-Etw’ already exists How do I delete the session?
http://entlib.codeplex.com/discussions/447091

http://entlib.codeplex.com/discussions/455508

http://weblogs.asp.net/hernandl/archive/2013/05/02/your-best-friend-for-authoring-etw-strongly-typed-events.aspx