Audit and Debug Logging

The audit and debug logging facility allows you to maintain a record of activity through an App Server by storing various messages, including error messages, which provide information about what's been happening.

Some of these messages are stored in the App Server Configuration Database, some in the Windows Event Log and others to file.

 

App Server automatically writes various service level events, such as starting and stopping, IP Port status (i.e. listen status of the server's IP port), database connectivity status, licence errors and other service-level errors, to the Windows Event Log. These messages are written to the NDL Digitise App Server log in the Application and Services Logs folder and can be viewed using the Windows Event Viewer. Logging of these messages is not affected by the configuration options available in App Manager (described below). If you experience problems when using Digitise Apps or running your Digitise apps, we suggest you check this log for any messages relating to the issue.

 

The remainder of this topic refers to log messages written to the App Server Configuration Database and to file. Logging stored in the App Server Configuration Database is also referred to in this help as the standard audit log.

 

App Manager allows you to turn the standard audit logging on and off and to specify a logging level, which determines which messages are written to the log. This configuration can be done at the system level or on an individual app or user basis (see below).

There are two different levels of logging – Audit and Debug.

Audit logging is the default level which stores general information about what has been happening at the server side, e.g. incoming connections, user logons, data downloads, error messages etc., to the standard audit log.

Debug logging adds extra server-side messages to the standard audit log, which record more technical information to help in the event that you experience problems using Digitise Apps. In addition, debug logging records the dialog between your App Server and Digitise Apps Client devices to file. You should only use the Debug level if you are experiencing problems, since this level stores significantly more information than the default audit level.

 

Audit and debug server-side messages are stored in the App Server Configuration Database.

The Client-Server communications debug messages are also logged server-side but are saved to file rather than in the App Server Configuration Database. A new log file will be produced each day, as long as the Audit Level is set to Debug, called:

Transaction_<date>.log

where <date> is in the format DD_MM_YYYY. These files are stored in the following folder:

C:\Users\All Users\ndl Software\Digitise Apps\Logging

You can read the entries in these log files using a standard text editor, such as Notepad or Notepad++.

  • Messages longer than 2065 bytes are truncated within the audit log. If you need to know the contents of larger messages, then you can use the log to file facility which doesn't truncate the messages.

 

By default, audit-level logging is turned on for the server, meaning that all apps and users will perform this level of logging. You can change this within App Manager, using the logging settings available on the Properties tabs under the Server, Application and User categories.

You can also use App Manager to read the standard audit log, using the Audit tabs under the same App Manager categories and also under the Device category.

Logging is configured on an app and user basis. Each app and user has an Audit Level Property under their Properties tab. In addition, there is a Default Audit Level Property under the Server category's Properties tab.

The Server's Default Audit Level Property provides a system-wide default logging setting. It can have one of the following values:

Debug - Store log messages at the debug level

 

Audit - Store log messages at the audit level

 

None - No Logging

 

The Application and User Audit Level Properties can have one of the following values:

Debug - Store log messages at the debug level

 

Audit - Store log messages at the audit level

 

None - No Logging

 

Default - Use the value in the Server's Default Audit Level Property

 

When a user loads a Digitise app, the App Server will check the values in the Audit Level Properties for both the app and the user and perform logging for that session accordingly.

By default, the Audit Level Properties for all apps and users are set to Default, which means that the setting in the Server's Default Audit Level Property will be used to determine whether to log a session and at what level.

If you change the setting of the Audit Level Property for an app or a user from Default to one of the other values, the value specified will override the Server setting for that app and/or user.

If a user loads an app and both app and user have different settings in their Audit Level Properties, the level highest up in the table above will take precedence. For example, if the user has a setting of None and the app has a setting of Debug, the server will log that session at the debug level, but if the same user uses another app which has an Audit Level setting of Default, no logging will take place for this second session.

If you want to restrict logging to a specific app and/or user, you should turn logging off in the Server's Default Audit Level Property, to stop logging of apps or users whose Audit Level Property is set to the default value of Default. You can then set an appropriate value in the Audit Level Property for the individual app(s) or user(s) you do want to perform logging.

If you change one of the audit level Properties, you will need to click on the Update button at the top of the right-hand pane to save your changes.

  • Changes to the logging Properties may take up to 2 or 3 minutes to take effect.

 

In addition to specifying the logging level, you can instruct Digitise Apps to send e-mail notifications when messages are written to the audit log so that you can be alerted when messages of interest are logged.

Log message saved to a file under one of the category's Audit tabs can be read using the App Manager's Log Viewer.

 

You can read the standard audit log by selecting the Audit tabs under each of the App Manager categories: Server, Application, Device and User.

When viewing the log, you can filter the stored messages in various ways so that you only see relevant messages and hide ones you're not interested in at that time.

The Audit tabs in each category automatically filter messages to be relevant to the category or to the currently selected item within the category. For example, if you want to see the logged messages relating to a particular device, select the device under the Device category and then choose the Audit tab. The information displayed will relate only to the selected device. Alternatively, you can see the logged information for all devices by selecting Devices at the top of the tree view in the left-hand pane.

 

You can also filter the information displayed using the Type and Period options at the top of the Audit Pane.

The Type option allows you to choose which type of audit messages you want to display. By default, all messages are included – Information, Errors and Debug. You can remove any of the three types by displaying the drop-down list and unchecking the check box against the type of message you don't want to see. To include those messages again later, simply recheck the check box.

The Period option allows you to filter messages displayed within a selected time period. To change the current setting, drop down the list of choices and choose the one you want. Immediate will show messages logged in approximately the last 5 minutes, Week the last week and so on. Today shows all messages logged since Midnight.

 

Each message is prefixed with a unique session identifier, e.g. [sid:999], which allows you to identify related messages across different views.

The audit messages are displayed divided into columns to make reading easier.

For the Server category four columns are displayed: Level, Time, Server and Message.

The other categories display additional columns: Time, Application, Form, Device, User, Device Address and Server Address. Columns which aren't relevant in the current view are not included, e.g. where you are viewing the log for a specific app, the 'Application' column will not be shown.

 

Additional auditing options are available from the Options button, to the right of the Type and Period options at the top of the auditing pane. Clicking on this button displays a menu with the following options:

Save

Save all currently displayed messages to file.

You can view saved logs using the Log Viewer available from the Server Properties tab.

 

Copy to Clipboard

Copy All/Selected messages to the Windows clipboard.

 

Delete

Display the Delete Auditing dialog box where audit messages can be optionally removed from the database.

 

Track Latest Record

When checked, forces the list to scroll such that the latest message is always in view.