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From: Michael Erskine <michael.erskine@ketech.com>
To: Log4J Users List <log4j-user@logging.apache.org>
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2008 10:14:13 +0100
Subject: RE: network logging performance
Thread-Topic: network logging performance
Thread-Index: AckOLnp/ZedndPYgT4yZpduvSBOJ1AAO1rgg
Message-ID: <06BA3262D918014F9183B66425D5A8D43608077BF5@no-sv-03.ketech.local>
References: <32E75534-6E85-4F81-8AE3-C66BB6055BAB@aconex.com>
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> If anyone out there is using "Logging over the network" of any form
> (socket, JMS, Multicast, syslog appenders etc), this topic is for you.
> I'm wondering whether people could comment on their experience setting
> up high performance logging of application data over the network.

For convenience I routinely configure SocketHubAppender instances for all m=
y services and typically set a threshold of WARN to reduce traffic to impor=
tant info.

Where performance is deemed more important than the timely delivery of the =
information I have custom asynchronous appenders with limited BlockingDeque=
 queues and daemon threads to pump out data at their leisure.

Where I have multiple services logging across the network to a central plac=
e I tend to use a custom JDBC asynchronous appender.

In other scenarios I have networked systems that require certain log messag=
es as part of a larger communications protocol. Here I have custom appender=
s that catch LoggingEvent messages, translate them and drop them in the out=
going BlockingDeque for the target system (I always work with queues on com=
plex systems to encourage loose coupling).

I don't tend to pass Java objects over the wire: call me a traditionalist b=
ut when I write my protocols they tend to be human-readable 7-bit ASCII whe=
re you can telnet to a server, issue commands and get replies. This is grea=
t for unit testing, troubleshooting, etc. More recently I've been writing s=
ystems that interoperate with 3rd party systems where XML is passed over th=
e wire (so performance is not of major importance :) ) and here I tend to m=
ake Apache XMLBeans and StAX parsers do all the work but internally I'll dr=
op down to a human readable (and loggable!) protocol for testing and faster=
 interfacing.

I have a strong belief that any non-trivial networked communications system=
 can be generalised to IRC!


Just my 2 euros :)

Regards,
Michael Erskine.


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