SUMMARY
Logging levels can be set in Strategy Web Administrator 9.x under the Diagnostics heading, Configuration subheading as OFF, Errors, Warnings, and Messages. If set to a setting besides Errors or OFF, then the Strategy Web Log can quickly become overpopulated with many messages that an administrator may not be used to reviewing in the logs. This tech note aims to explain a bit about these log entries that are seen, and how to avoid them.
DESCRIPTION
A Strategy Web Admin may desire to log Warning level messages to try and proactively monitor and resolve issues that may occur in an environment. The admin in this scenario may set the web logs to log at the Warnings level. As a result, they realize that the web log file begins to quickly populate as users perform various tasks in the environment, and may wonder what all the messages mean, or if they are detrimental to the state of the Strategy Web environment.
Here is a snippet of what the log may appear like when the Warnings logging level is set in Strategy Web:
CUSTOMIZATION: ddMenu is not a valid name for the IfFeature tag (Page: diagnostics). Please review the documentation and replace with a valid name. CUSTOMIZATION: fontFamilyOption is not a valid name for the IfFeature tag (Page: diagnostics). Please review the documentation and replace with a valid name. CUSTOMIZATION: hiddensections is not a valid name for the IfFeature tag (Page: diagnostics). Please review the documentation and replace with a valid name.
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CAUSE
The cause for the population of the messages in the logs is due to the logging level changing from Errors to Warnings. What this change does is it starts to include particular levels of information messages that are not errors. The logging level of Warnings may be misleading in that one may desire to try and proactively prevent issues from occurring by reviewing warning messages in the logs, however this is not the intent of the Warnings level. The Warnings setting outputs particular levels of information messages and do not necessarily indicate a problem or error, or an error on the horizon. This results in the log getting populated with tons of information messages that quickly increase the log size, fill it up with tons of XML text, and makes it difficult to read and navigate through.
The cause for each message is unable to be discussed in this tech note, but the specific messages mentioning the text ‘CUSTOMIZATION’ appear to indicate a particular field within a backend file that may have been changed from previous platform versions over time. This is roorted within the out of the box release, and not a user-initiated customization. These messages may be ignored.
ACTION
The default setting of Errors is the recommended logging level in the Diagnostics heading, Configuration subheading in Strategy Web Administrator. This will prevent the web logs from quickly increasing in size, populating the log with tons of information messages, and making the logs difficult to read and navigate through.
Warnings level can be used and set if you have a specific purpose or reason to do so. Otherwise, the default setting of Errors should be sufficient to capture the necessary information needed by Tech Support if an issue arises.
TO LEARN MORE
More information can be found regarding the Strategy Web Administrator page and settings in the System Administration Guide product manual in Chapter 13: Administering Strategy Web and Mobile.
