[Enterprise Extensions only]

Problem determination

When running, WebSphere Application Server enterprise services records information about its activities in its activity log. The activity log on each host captures events that show a history of the enterprise services' activities on that host. Some of the entries in the log are informational and others report on system exceptions, such as returned CORBA exceptions.

If you encounter enterprise services runtime errors, it is often useful to read the activity log and try to diagnose the problem yourself. After this, if you still need assistance from IBM to help you diagnose problems, you can provide the formatted activity log output to your IBM service personnel.

There is one activity log for each host machine. By default, the activitycpp.log file resides in the WebSphere Application Server enterprise services' service subdirectory, wasee_install\services; where wasee_install is the directory into which you installed WebSphere Application Server enterprise services on the host. You can specify an alternative location on the com.ibm.CORBA.activityLogDirectory property in the properties file identified by the SOMCBPROPS environment variable. You can also specify the maximum size of the activity log on the com.ibm.CORBA.activityLogMaxSize property. The activity log file is created automatically when the first log entry needs to be written.

Because the activity log is an accumulation of information, it always contains extraneous data. Some activity log entries report serious failures, but many of them only report on the execution of activities, expected exceptions, or warnings of potentially dangerous situations. For example, in most instances, lower level components write an entry in the activity log when they decide to throw an exception, even when the caller of the lower level component is prepared to handle the exception and continue processing on a normal code path. Although all these entries on activities, handled exceptions, and warnings can make it difficult to read the log, sometimes they do provide useful data to help you determine the exact cause of the problem that you are diagnosing.

Before you can read the contents of an activity log, you must format the log file. For more information about formatting an activity log, see Formatting an activity or trace log.

For more information about the data fields of entries in the activity log, see Fields in a formatted activity log entry.

If you need to do low-level debugging of problems identified in the activity log, you can turn on tracing for appropriate components then format and study the detailed information generated.

Note: Trace is used by or for IBM service personnel to assist in collecting data in possible defect situations. This support should only be used under direction of IBM service personnel. Incorrectly setting trace attributes for objects can result in performance degradation for normal operation.

If you turn on tracing for a component type, extra detailed information is recorded in one or more trace logs for the host. Multiple trace files can be generated if needed. By default, the trace log files are stored in the WebSphere Application Server's service subdirectory. You can specify an alternative location on the com.ibm.CORBA.traceLogDirectory property in the properties file identified by the SOMCBPROPS environment variable. You can also specify the maximum size of a trace log on the com.ibm.CORBA.traceLogMaxSize property. Trace log files are created automatically, and have the following name format: yydddhhmmss.xxx format where:

yy
is the year
ddd
is the Julian date
hh
is the hour
mm
is the minutes
xxx
is a three digit number between 101 and 999. After 999, the number rolls over to 101.

Before you can read the contents of a trace log, you must format the log file. You can also merge and format multiple log files into a single output file, sort and display the contents of trace logs in various groupings. For more information about formatting a trace log, see Formatting an activity or trace log.