BI Publisher Logging & Debugging – Part 3

Yesterday, I have discussed how to enable and use the BI Publisher’s reporting level logging feature. Today, I would like to talk about how you can enable and use the BI Publisher Server level log information.

At default setting BI Publisher logs only error information in a system output. You can enable BI Publisher to generate more information in the system output by setting its debug level to ‘Debug’. The default is set to ‘Exception’.

Once you have set the BI Publisher Enterprise Server instance to be debug mode then it will start generating more information about the system level process in a system log file. If your BI Publisher is running on the OC4J server then you can find the log information in the OC4J console window.

Configuration for BI Publisher Server Level Log

Here are the steps to change your BI Publisher Enterprise Server to be in a debug mode:

1. Login to BIP as Administrator
2. Select Admin -> System Maintenance -> Server Configuration
3. Change Debug Level to ‘Debug’ under General Properties
   
   
   
4. Click on the ‘Apply’ button and restart the server.

Now you should start seeing more information than when the ‘Debug Level’ is set to ‘Exception’ in the application log file.

Where Can I Find the Log with OC4J ?

When you are running BI Publisher Enterprise Server on OC4J it generates system logging information to the OC4J console window. However, the problem is that the log information keeps being printed in the console but it doesn’t get logged into any log file on a file system. So unless you’re sitting in front of the server machine and be able to access to the console window, it’s not really useful. As an alternative, you can spool the console log information into a text file by updating the OC4J startup command file. Here is an example.

<original> "%JAVA_HOME%\bin\java" %JVMARGS% -jar "%OC4J_JAR%" %CMDARGS% => <updated> "%JAVA_HOME%\bin\java" %JVMARGS% -jar "%OC4J_JAR%" %CMDARGS% > oc4j.log

 

Are There Any Other Log Files ?

If you are running BI Publisher Enterprise Server on a OC4J server the OC4J server itself also generates various log files at runtime. Among all the files the most help file would be the application.log file, which includes system level warning and error messages. For example, when some functionalities of the BI Publisher Enterprise Server are not working or the server was shutdown unintentionally you might want to check this file first. The log file is located under the BI Publisher Server application deployment folder, but you can view the same log file from Oracle Enterprise Manager’s UI window as well. The below is a list of steps on how you can open the file within the Enterprise Manger.

Steps to access application.log file:

1. Access to Oracle Enterprise Manager and login

   e.g. http://knishida-lap.us.oracle.com:9704/em

2. Click ‘Log’ link located at the bottom

   

3. Select Components -> OC4J -> home -> Application xmlpserver

   

4. Click ‘View’ icon

   

You can view the log in the EM window, or you can click the log file link to download the full content of the log file.

OC4J server also generates other system level log files. Here is a list of the log files that are generated at runtime and can be found at the specified location.

OC4J log files:

• OC4J components using Java logging : /log/oc4j/log.xml
• Application Server Control Console : /log/ascontrol-application.log
• Applications deployed into OC4J  : /application-deployments/app_name/application.log
• Global (default) application  : /log/global-application.log
• Default Web site access logging  : /log/default-web-access.log
• OC4J server  : /log/server.log
• JMS  : /log/jms.log
• RMI  : /log/rmi.log

You can find more information about the OC4J log file in ‘OC4J Administrator’s Guide’.

Conclusion

BI Publisher offers a wide range of logging capability that is useful for you to perform a debugging and analysis when you encounter an error or issue. It is very critical to understand what type of information is available, when to use them, and how to analyze them to help addressing your problems. Now you have all the information, so have fun debugging and tuning!