Log files for Rational DOORS and Rational DOORS Web Access

You can use log files to troubleshoot issues that occur in the IBM® Rational® DOORS® database server, client, and interoperation server, and in the Rational DOORS Web Access server and message broker.

Depending on your configuration, these logging tools are available to diagnose unexpected behavior:
  • Diagnostic log for the client
  • Database server transaction log
  • Client transaction log
  • Rational DOORS Web Access server, interoperation server, and message broker logs
  • Application message logs and the data collection utility

Diagnostic log for the Rational DOORS client

The client has a built-in logging mechanism that records any unusual events that occur as a result of an internal error during your session. To view the diagnostic log, click Help > Show Diagnostic Log. If necessary, you can copy the information from the output window and save it as a local text file.

To record a more detailed log, you can also enable extra transaction-based logging on the client and database server. For more information, see the next sections.

Database server logging for Rational DOORS

The database server provides logging that can record activity at different levels of detail. By default, this logging is not enabled because it can increase processor usage for transactions and slow the speed to complete a requested function, or degrade the overall performance. The details in the output log are based on the log level value that you set. The values range from level 1, the most terse, to level 6, the most verbose. Before you turn on server logging, check with Support to determine which level is necessary to resolve the problem.

Table 1. Logging levels
Log level Log information details
1 Connections, disconnections, and problem packets
2 Connections, disconnections, and packet types
3 Connections, disconnections, packet types, and packet arguments in compact format
4 Connections, disconnections, packet types, and packet arguments in verbose format
5 Only data cache operations
6 Connections, disconnections, data cache operations, packet types, and packet arguments in verbose format
To help identify an unspecified error, you might need to start logging at level 6 to capture all activity. After database logging is enabled and you reproduce the behavior, send the generated log file to Support and disable logging, as described in the help topic Enabling a transaction log in the Rational DOORS database server.
Note: To avoid performance degradation, enable database logging for only limited diagnostic periods.

Client logging for Rational DOORS

You can enable logging to troubleshoot connection issues to the database server. The log does not contain module or object data that might have content-sensitive information; it contains only the file transaction details. From the computer with the issue, open the Rational DOORS client and run a DXL command to enable client logging and generate a local log file. After you reproduce the behavior, send the generated log file to Support and disable logging, as described in the client logging help topic Enabling a transaction log in the Rational DOORS client.

Logging for the Rational DOORS interoperation server and the Rational DOORS Web Access server and message broker

By default, the Rational DOORS Web Access components provide Info-level log records. At the Info level, the log records contain informational messages that describe the progress of the application at a high level. To include more detail, enable components to run at the Debug level.

The Rational DOORS interoperation server and the Rational DOORS Web Access server and message broker provide Info-level log records in these directories:
  • DWA_INSTALL_DIR\broker\data\activemq.log
  • DWA_INSTALL_DIR\server\festival\logs
To generate detailed information with Debug-level logging, see the related links for Rational DOORS Web Access logging. There are multiple log files in the logs directory. To diagnose an issue, start with these files:
  • festival.log contains every log message written by the Rational DOORS Web Access server.
  • request.log is used to verify that requests are received. This log is useful for diagnosing processes that span multiple applications.
  • response.log is used to confirm that responses were returned to the invoking application. This log is useful for confirming that the received request finished and returned a result.
Error messages are written to different log files based on how they originated. Most errors are written to exception.log, but the other error log files can also be used. The three error log files are:
  • exception.log
  • error_view.log
  • error_misc.log

Application message logging and the data collector utility

Version 9.4 introduced application message logging that is based on Apache log4cxx logging services. You can do these tasks without restarting the server:
  • Limit the log file size
  • Set up the automatic cleanup of old files
  • Choose the format of output log files
  • Change the log level and the log configurations
The configuration file is monitored every 60 seconds to detect changes.

Five levels of logging exist, which listed from lowest to highest are Debug, Info, Warn, Error, and Fatal. Each level logs information for that level and all higher levels. For example, the Warn level includes information from the Warn, Error, and Fatal modes.

Earlier versions of Rational DOORS required manual iterative gathering of environment and resource information along with diagnostic logs during the initial troubleshooting phase. With the introduction of application messaging in version 9.4, you can run a command-line data collection tool to collect logs that are generated according to the application messaging configuration instructions. The data collection tool also creates three text files:
  • readme.txt provides clarity on the usage when the problem occurs.
  • problemDetails.txt is a template file in which you can manually enter problem details.
  • collectedInformation.txt is a record of automatically collected information about the operating system, Rational DOORS product information, supported dynamic linked library files (.DLL), and the config.ini file.
For information about setting up log files, see these topics: