Re: [boost] A meta-proposal for logging

From: Scott Woods (scottw_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-04-03 17:02:27

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Andrey Semashev" <andysem_at_[hidden]>
To: "Austin Bingham" <boost_at_[hidden]>
Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2007 7:49 AM
Subject: Re: [boost] A meta-proposal for logging
> Hello Austin,
>
> Tuesday, April 3, 2007, 10:55:49 PM, you wrote:
>

>>    I can't disagree more with this. IMO, logging is not at all a way to
>>> give information to the program user. In my mind, a logging library is
>>> intended only for debugging, journaling, auditing and performance
>>> measuring. Not a way to display error message or waiting message to the
>>> user. In my mind, these are totally different things. Please someone,
>>> give his POV on this, I think this is a major disagreement.

Apologies if this is an intrusion. I have been following this thread but
til now haven't had anything to offer.

There seems to be some debate over what logging should properly be
used for. Is it for end-users, developers or admin?

My short answer to this is "one or more of the above", without forgetting
that other interested parties will surely be discovered in the future (how
about the legal department?).

Some recent experience has directed me to the view that logging can
usefully be broken into (at least) two parts. The first deals with 
construction,
transport, storage and retrieval of logging information, the second deals 
with the
logging requirements for the specific system being developed.

The usefulness of this separation is that the former remains the same across
many (a word full of hope) "specific systems".

A recent implementation has resulted in a logging system that transports and
stores a sequence of mixed data records (given the name a "ragged deque").
A set of record types is registered, instances are constructed, transported 
and
stored. A minimal header with information like "received time", is prepended
by the storage system. The order in which the records were received is
preserved.

It is difficult to say anything useful about the "specific system" 
requirements due
to scale and the fact that they are simply not part of generic logging. 
Suffice to
say that the new uses discovered for the log records continue to surprise me 
a
year after the basic logging technology was ironed out, e.g. it is now 
delivering
"alarm" type functionality.

Cheers.