Guideline

Logging Console and Monitoring

Product(s): IBM Cognos 8 Area of Interest: Infrastructure

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Copyright Copyright 2008 Cognos ULC (formerly Cognos Incorporated). Cognos ULC is an IBM Company. While every attempt has been made to ensure that the information in this document is accurate and complete, some typographical errors or technical inaccuracies may exist. Cognos does not accept responsibility for any kind of loss resulting from the use of information contained in this document. This document shows the publication date. The information contained in this document is subject to change without notice. Any improvements or changes to the information contained in this document will be documented in subsequent editions. This document contains proprietary information of Cognos. All rights are reserved. No part of this document may be copied, photocopied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, or translated into another language without the prior written consent of Cognos. Cognos and the Cognos logo are trademarks of Cognos ULC (formerly Cognos Incorporated) in the United States and/or other countries. IBM and the IBM logo are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, or other countries, or both. All other names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Information about Cognos products can be found at www.cognos.com This document is maintained by the Best Practices, Product and Technology team. You can send comments, suggestions, and additions to cscogpp@ca.ibm.com .

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Contents
1 1.1 1.2 2 2.1 2.2 3 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 4 5 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 6 7 8 9 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................ 4 PURPOSE ..............................................................................................................4 APPLICABILITY .......................................................................................................4 IBM COGNOS LOGGING CONSOLE ................................................................ 4 OVERVIEW ............................................................................................................4 ENABLE THE LOGGING CONSOLE ..................................................................................4 CONSOLE WINDOW ...................................................................................... 4 MENU/BUTTON BAR .................................................................................................5 COMPONENT FRAME.................................................................................................8 ACTION FRAME.......................................................................................................8 INFORMATION FRAME ...............................................................................................9 ALERT MANAGEMENT.................................................................................... 9 IPF VIEWER ................................................................................................ 12 FILE FRAME ......................................................................................................... 12 QUERY FRAME...................................................................................................... 12 QUERY RESULT FRAME ........................................................................................... 13 INDICATION FRAME................................................................................................ 13 TRAILS FRAME ..................................................................................................... 13 IPF PERFORMANCE VIEWER....................................................................... 14 SUMMARY VIEWER ..................................................................................... 15 XML VIEWER ............................................................................................... 16 EXTERNAL APPLICATION VIEWER (WINDOWS ONLY) .............................. 16

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1 Introduction
1.1 Purpose This document describes how to use the IBM Cognos Logging Console that is shipped with IBM Cognos 8. Applicability This document applies to the earlier releases of IBM Cognos 8. The logging console has been discontinued and is no longer shipped with the IBM Cognos 8.4.1 and higher releases of the product.

1.2

2 IBM Cognos Logging Console

2.1 Overview The IBM Cognos Logging Console is a utility that allows you to turn on and off tracing and log files, view and organize the context on the log files and alert you when certain error messages show up in a log file. Enable the Logging Console To start the console you must go in to the Cognos8/bin folder and double click on logconsole.exe

2.2

3 Console Window
The main console window consists of these main areas Menu/button bars Components frame Action frame Information frame

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Menu/button bar

Action Frame

Component Information Frame

3.1

Menu/button bar The following describes the actions for all the buttons in the button bar.
Menu Action File > Save
Saves all changes that were modified in the console.

Menu Action File > Reset to Default

Reset all settings back to the factory defaults

Menu Action File > Restore to last saved

When the user wants to undo all the changes that has been done since the last time the setting were saved

Menu Action Service > Restart service

Restarts the IBM Cognos 8 service

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Menu Action Package > Package log files
Zips up selected log files in a file called logconsole_logs.zip and put it in the IBM Cognos 8/logs folder. A menu option will appear to select your log file.

Menu Action Alert > Alert Management

Ability to set alerts from log files depending on the error code Check Alert Management

Menu Action Viewers > IPF

This viewer Allows the user to apply a SQL statement against the log files Check IPF VIewer

Menu Action Viewers > Performance

Summarizes the results from a performance log. Check IPF Performance Viewer

Menu Action Viewers > Summary

Counts all the occurrences of message codes in a log file Check - Summary Viewer

Menu Action Viewers > XML

Open up a built in xml viewer Check XML Viewer

Menu Action Viewers > External Applications

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Check External Application Viewer

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3.2

Component Frame This frame lists all the components that can be traced in IBM Cognos 8. The following is an explanation of that the following indications mean.
- No logging has been enable for that component

some elements have been enabled but not all

- all tracing has been enabled

If there is an asterisk ( * ) on the right hand side of the component name that means that there has been some changes in the action frame and the new setting have not been saved yet.
Ex.

Once the setting has been saved the asterisk will disappear.

3.3

Action Frame This section allows you to enable/disable trace files for a component. When there is a check in the box under the elements column, the trace file has been turned on. As well, when a particular element line has been selected the contents of the log file will be displayed in the information frame. If the log file is empty then the information frame will be empty. Enabled
Modifiable yes
Use to turn on/off logging for an element. If the box is greyed out, this means that you can not control it from the console but in another location. The information window should tell you where.

Element Level

Modifiable no
Shows the element that is going to be logged

Modifiable yes
Some elements have certain level that it can set to show more, less or specific information that can be sent to the log file. If this setting can be change, when you click on a cell on Level then a drop down list should appear to choose a value. If no level can be set then clicking on the cell can will not do anything

Filename Restart

Modifiable no
Shows the location and the name of the log file

Modifiable no
Shows if a restart of the IBM Cognos 8 service is necessary to activate the trace file.

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3.4

Information Frame This will show any other important information, log file contents or action that is needed for that component. When viewing a log file in the this frame a button bar at the top of the frame will be activated
Erases the content of the log file refreshes the log file continually refreshes the log file every x second(s)

Search for any key words in the log file. The find in casesensitive

4 Alert Management
This will scan the log files for certain message codes in the log files and then send an alert when the message code appears. This will refresh the log file(s) every second. 1. Click on the Alert Management button ( ) )

2. In the alert management window, click on the add alert button ( 3. Select a Message code. a. Beside the Message Code button type in one of the codes. Ex. CM-SYS-5094 Should like the following:

Or b. Click on the Message Code... button, which bring up the Select a Message Code window. i. Highlight a log file in the top half of the window. If the log file is not in the logs folder then navigate to the other folder and click on the log file

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ii. Click on the Show Summary button. At the bottom of the window there should be a list of message codes, how many times it shows in the log file, last time the message happened and a description of the code.

iii. Click on one of the message code in the message code column. At this time, the Select a Message Code window closes and the message code has been populated in the box to the right of the Message Code.. button. iv. Beside Occurrences, put down how many time in the log that the message code should appear before send out a warning. (max 99) v. The time window sets the window of time in which the number of occurrences must fall within for the alert to be fired. (i.e. If code occurs occurrences times within time window minutes, trigger the alert) (e.g. if CM-SYS-5094 occurs 3 times within a 10 minute window, send an email) vi. Under Action, put in the email address to alert someone and/or select a program or batch file to run. The option to restart the IBM Cognos 8 service is here as well

At the bottom of the screen there is a line that says SMTP Server put in the name of the server. Port 25 is assumed and can not be modified. Ex smtp.server.com If you want to add another condition then repeat steps 1-6. If you are finished then click on the save and close window. To remove an alert, Highlight the alert line and click on the Delete Alert ) button (

*** Important: In the <c8 location>\bin folder, you must also run the runLogMonitor.bat file (On Unix, the files is called runLogMonitor.sh). You can minimize the command window but it must be running so it can monitor the cogserver.log file.

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You may also wish to add the runLogMonitor.bat file to the Startup folder on Windows, or in the .profile, so that monitoring will resume if the server is rebooted for any reason.

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5 IPF Viewer
This viewer allows the user to apply SQL statements to the log file for analysis.

File Frame

Query Frame

Query Results Frame

? Frame

Indication Frame

5.1

File frame Click on the browse button to select a log file.

5.2

Query Frame Create a SQL statement that will help in analysing the log file. If you right mouse click in the text area you will get a menu of all the columns in the log file.

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Once the SQL statement has been written. Click on the execute button to run. This will load previously save SQL file. There are 5 SQL files in the logging consoled be default located in the c8/data/logconsole folder Will save the SQL statement in a file.

5.3

Query Result Frame This will display the results executed from the Query frame

5.4

Indication frame No matter what the result is from the SQL Execution. If a line is selected in the query results frame the entire indication will show in this frame.

5.5

Trails Frame This will display Request, components and jobs listed in the log file. If any one of these items are highlighted. Then in the query result frame it will show all the relevant lines in the log file in bold. All irrelevant lines will be greyed out.

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6 IPF Performance viewer

When performance logging has been enabled, this viewer can be used to analyze the log file to get Stack trace information, CPU Time, etc.

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7 Summary Viewer
The summary viewer will show all the message codes in a log file and how many times it appeared in the log file.

Once a log file has been selected at the top of the window, the middle of the screen will show all message codes and how many times it will show in the log file. If the user clicks on one of the message codes, the bottom will show all the lines with that message code. If no code has been selected then the whole log file will be shown. There is also the ability to search for specific words. The search is case sensitive.

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8 XML Viewer
This is a built in tool to view xml files. This is not an editor.

9 External Application Viewer (Windows Only)

This is a Windows-only Button. It uses any association that is set in Windows between a file extension (e.g. ".xml") and an application (e.g. XML-Spy, notepad). If you select a file and then press the 'External Application' button, the Logging Console will attempt to start the application associated with the selected file.

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10 NEW IN 7.3
Menu Action File > Web Server Logs
Browse to the location of the root folder of tomcat and.or Websphere there log files will show in the Logging Console. Then click Save.

The log files will show up in the Component frame and all the log file will show in the Action frame.

Menu Action File > Export Settings

Allows the user to export the Logging Console setting in an xml file in order to save or import in to another installation

Menu Action File > Import Settings

Allows to import the xml file created from the export process

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