Feature Request to enhance Weblogic Tech Support

Question

Hi,
I will try to express my idea in "draft" form. I think weblogic architects
can enhance the ideas to hashout all the necessary details.
It will be very good to have following environment variables in
startWeblogic.cmd / startWeblogic.sh files:
ENABLE_RECORDING=True/False
RECORDING_MODULES=JMS;RMI;EJB;ServletEngine;JSPEngine;...
RECORDING_OUTPUT_TYPE=Text/Binary
Through these variables developers can tell the system to record "important"
information necessary to capture the problem they are experiencing.
The output file (text or binary) can be sent to tech support to reduce
speculation and inhance correct analyzation of the issue at hand.
Each module can be peppered with log() statements that would check the
environment variable and spit-out "important" system status as the product
runs to encounter the problem at hand. Also it will be extremely easy to
capture the WLS version and service pack level, O/S details, JVM details
into the output file. This will greatly eliminate the obvious questions
like: what was the version of WLS? Did you apply SP4?, What was your
CLASSPATH? etc.,
Developers can use this feature to quickly capture important system state by
replaying the trouble scenario and send the output file for further
analysis.
This would reduce the total time necessary to debug the problem and also
improves the accuracy of the problem analysis.
I envison that WLS will continue to evolve to add more and more features.
So, A feature like this would greatly improve the assistance developers can
get from tech support teams.
If these properties can be changed at runtime through weblogic server
console, then it will be extremely helpful to debug production systems
without restarting them.
Also this feature would greatly distinguish the WLS product from competition
regards,
Satheesh Donthy

Answer 1

We have written a JSP that gathers this info from the log file and allows the
customers to email it to whomever or to save it to disk and mail it with their
own mailer as an attachment. So what we have here is functionally complete, but
we want you to test it and give us your feed back and let us know how we should
change it. It is a bit ugly because it has to support so many versions and
there have been API changes and we wanted to make it inclusive all in one file.
Very soon this will be pushed on to developer.bea.com and will also be included
with SP6
This works fine from 451 to 51 SP-3. This may not work with SP4 as they
are some problems with inner classes in SP4 which we are looking into it..
Your feedback will be highly appreciated.
PS: Courtesy of Mark Griffith.
kumar
Satheesh A Donthy wrote:
Hi,
I will try to express my idea in "draft" form. I think weblogic architects
can enhance the ideas to hashout all the necessary details.
It will be very good to have following environment variables in
startWeblogic.cmd / startWeblogic.sh files:
ENABLE_RECORDING=True/False
RECORDING_MODULES=JMS;RMI;EJB;ServletEngine;JSPEngine;...
RECORDING_OUTPUT_TYPE=Text/Binary
Through these variables developers can tell the system to record "important"
information necessary to capture the problem they are experiencing.
The output file (text or binary) can be sent to tech support to reduce
speculation and inhance correct analyzation of the issue at hand.
Each module can be peppered with log() statements that would check the
environment variable and spit-out "important" system status as the product
runs to encounter the problem at hand. Also it will be extremely easy to
capture the WLS version and service pack level, O/S details, JVM details
into the output file. This will greatly eliminate the obvious questions
like: what was the version of WLS? Did you apply SP4?, What was your
CLASSPATH? etc.,
Developers can use this feature to quickly capture important system state by
replaying the trouble scenario and send the output file for further
analysis.
This would reduce the total time necessary to debug the problem and also
improves the accuracy of the problem analysis.
I envison that WLS will continue to evolve to add more and more features.
So, A feature like this would greatly improve the assistance developers can
get from tech support teams.
If these properties can be changed at runtime through weblogic server
console, then it will be extremely helpful to debug production systems
without restarting them.
Also this feature would greatly distinguish the WLS product from competition
regards,
Satheesh Donthy[serversave.jsp]
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