Logging

Vertec Logging tracks information and error messages of all operations in and around Vertec (Vertec apps, Vertec Addins, and Cloud Server). Each log information is assigned to one of the following levels:

• 10: Debugging
• 20: Info
• 30: Warning
• 40: Error
• 50: Fatal

All information from level 20 is tracked by default. Log entries with level 10 (debug) are only written if they are explicitly enabled. For this purpose there are so-called Debugcategories, which are set in the log section of the Vertec.ini file.

Vertec creates various log files in which the different processes are listed. The following log files are available:

If no Logfilefolder is specified in the log section of the Vertec.ini file, these logfiles are created per client under User\AppData\Roaming\Vertec. An easy way to access this folder directly is to use the %appdata% command.

• Type %appdata% directly into the address bar of Windows Explorer, or
• Click Start > Execute (or Windows+R) and type %appdata%

This opens the folder Application data folder of the logged-in user directly. The log files are placed in a subfolder that bears the name of the folder in which the corresponding application is located. If the applications are located in the folder C:\Programs\Vertec, the log files will be located in %appdata%\Vertec.

You can specify your own Logfilename in the Log section of the Vertec.ini file. Operation from the Desktop App and the Cloud App app will then be logged to this file.

This is not overwritten at the start of the program, but all log information is appended at the back.

The maximum size of log files is limited to 1 MB. Older data is kept in backup files 1-9 (for example: Vertec.Desktop.1.Log). This is done automatically.

If no Logfilefolder is specified in the log section of the Vertec.ini file, these log files are located in the folder C:\ProgramData\. Similar to the folder %appdata% (see above), you can access this folder directly from %programdata%.

If the Restrict Session Process option is enabled in the [Cloudserver] section of the Vertec.ini file, the Vertec.Session.log log file is located in the C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\systemprofile\AppData\LocalLow folder.

All the above-mentioned log entries can also be written system-wide to the LOGDATA table in the database. The advantage of SQL logging over log files is that the log outputs of all clients are centrally collected in the database.

This process should only be used temporarily and then turned off again, as the endless filling of log entries can cause performance problems over time.

In the [Log] section of the Vertec.ini file, you can use

SqlLogTable=True

logging into a table called LOGDATA. The table is automatically created in the DB and contains all log output that would also be written to a log file.

The log table LOGDATA contains the following columns:

The LOGDATA table is deleted during an update.

The python method log passes the information directly to the Vertec Logging System. This information is processed in the same way as above, i.e. in the corresponding log file and/or written as entries in the database.

Registered as     event script to delete.

# coding: windows-1252
#
#---Description: EventLog:
#   Classes: N
#   ObjectScript: N
#   ContainerScript: N
#   EventType: None
#   EventClass: To specify
#   EventMembers: To specify
#   ExtendedRights: N

import vtcapp

def main():
    #currently logged in user
    vertecUserName = vtcapp.evalocl(“Timsession.allInstances->first.login.asstring”)
    #Specify Category
    logCategory = “ExampleCategory”
    #Specify Levels
    logLevel = 20
    #compose the message
    logObjectType = argobject.eval(“self->oclType.asstring”)
    logObjectId = argobject.eval(“boldid”)
    vtcapp.log(logCategory,logLevel,”'%s’ with ID '%i’ deleted by '%s’” %(logObjectType,logObjectId,vertecUserName))
main()

The entries in the script have level 20, so they automatically appear in the logfile.

If the entries are assigned to level 10, the log section in the Vertec.ini file must be supplemented by the debug category vertec.Examplecategory specified in the script in order to list the entries.

From Vertec 6.4.0.9 it is possible to send the log output from the server-based Vertec processes (Vertec.Cloudserver, Vertec.Session) and from Vertec 6.4.0.12 also from the Vertec Desktop App to the cloud-based logger service Loggly.

For this purpose, the following values must be set in the Vertec.ini File in the [Log] section:

• LogglyToken: Enter the custom Loggly token. If this value is set, the log output is sent to Loggly or to the specified LogglyUrl.
• LogglyUrl: Specifies the desired URL for Loggly. If nothing is specified, the output will be sent to https://logs-01.loggly.com/.

After setting these values, the Vertec Cloud Server must be restarted.

The following values are sent to Loggly:

• hostName: Hostname of the host where the process is running.
• level: Log level of the information (e.g. ERROR), see at the top of this article
• loggerName: Name of the affected logger (e.g. Vertec.Session.BaseSessionContext )
• Message: The actual log information
• process: Name of the affected process (e.g. Vertec.Session)
• timestamp: time of log entry in ISO-8601 format

The customer name from the license information is sent as a tag if it is available at the time of the log entry (this information is not available very early in the startup process).

In early Vertec versions, logging was controlled by a registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Vertec

There are two values:

• LogFileName: If a path is set there, this file is logged.
• DebugCategories: By default, Info and Error messages are logged so that too many log entries are not generated. For special debugging purposes, a list of Debug Categories can be specified (separated by commas) for which additional debug information is written to the logfile. Possible values are e.g. vertec.dbmtim and vertec.sync.

LogFileName = c:vertec.log
DebugCategories = vertec.dbmtim, vertec.sync

If you have been using Vertec for a long time, these values may still be active for you, but you can switch to the default log files at any time by entering the appropriate values in the [Log] section of the Vertec.ini file and deleting the registry entries.