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Oracle Fusion Middleware 12c – selective tracing

Published on: 27 April 2015 Author: Michel Schildmeijer Category: Oracle

For doing a good diagnosis in case of a problem in your Oracle Fusion Middleware Product, the platform offers you many methods and techniques to do your investigation. The disadvantage from some of these methods is that they have some impact on your system, such as if you would raise the log or debuglevel or use diagnostic snapshots.

Selective Tracing is a facility available through Enterprise Manager to limit the scope of trace logging.This allows for debugging of a production system without overloading the system with logging activity. To use Selective Tracing, perform the following method:

On the left expand ‘WebLogic Domain’
Open Enterprise Manager: http://<your host>:7001/em

Right click your domain name -> Logs -> Selective Tracing. This will bring you to the following screen where you can configure your Selective Tracing session. Click on add fields and select as below:

Select the ‘Option Name’ to choose the scope of your trace session. In this example we choose ‘Composite Name’ and enter the value in the text field.

Set your trace level as desired, enter an optional description and specify a duration for the trace session. The default value is 30 minutes. We leave trace to FINEST
You have two options for the Trace ID, a system generated alphanumeric value or a custom value that you choose. In this example we’re using a custom string, trn[nn]trace

You may select the loggers that you want to be active for your tracing session by expanding the ‘Loggers’ below the form.

All loggers are enabled by default and there is the option to both sort by the available columns as well as search. Here we display only the loggers that contain the string ‘oracle.bpel’

Your Selective Tracing session is now configured and ready to be activated by clicking the ‘Start Tracing’ button. If all is well you will see the following confirmation message at the top of the screen:

Run the composite for which the tracing session is enabled.

When the run is complete, success or failure, we have a couple of options to view the trace output. Since all of the trace entries are logged in the server diagnostic log, <server home>/logs/<server>_diagnostic.log, we can filter by the trace ID using your preferred editor, or by clicking on you trace event.

Each trace log entry is quite long. Below are some snippets of what to expect.

Your trace session will expire at the end of the specified duration or you may manually disable it in the ‘Active Traces and Tracing History’ tab by highlighting the session and clicking the ‘Disable’ button. If you should restart your managed server instance during the tracing session the session will be ended and must be recreated when the managed server instance is back up.

About the author Michel Schildmeijer

Michel started his career as a medical officer in the Royal Dutch Airforce, with a focus on pharma. After the air force, he continued in pharma, followed by time working in clinical pharmacology. While there, he transitioned to IT by learning UNIX and MUMPS, and developed a system for managing patients’ medical records. As his career developed, his responsibility shifted from a deep technical perspective to a more visionary role. At the end of 2011, Michel authored a book on WebLogic Administration for beginners. He joined Qualogy in April 2012 where he expanded his repertoire significantly, serving a wide range of customers with his knowledge about Java Application Servers, Middleware and Application Integration. He also increased his multiple-industry knowledge in his role as Solutions or IT architect by working for customers in a range of sectors, including financials, telecom, public transportation and government organizations. In 2012, he received the IT Industry-recognized title of Oracle ACE for being an ambassador and community leader in his area of expertise. In 2019, this was enhanced to Oracle ACE Director. Michel is asked regularly to speak about technology and the impact of innovation at national and international conferences such as KubeCon, Oracle OpenWorld, Groundbreakers Developers Tours and others. He contributes actively to the OpenSource community and solutions regarding containerization, CI/CD and DevOps. In October 2021, Michel took an exciting step in his career by becoming Business Unit Manager for Qualogy Managed Services. While he still has a finger on the pulse in terms of technology, he is expanding his scope by combining his experience with the new insights gained in his new position. Read more via blog: https://bit.ly/3fAxrqf | Medium: https://mschildmeijer.medium.com/ | Books: Oracle Weblogic Server 11gR1 PS2: Administration Essentials: https://bit.ly/3IhALmf | Oracle WebLogic Server 12c: First Look1: https://bit.ly/31olbpj