Use the binary trace facility - Intelligent Management

Use the binary trace facility - Intelligent Management

Intelligent Management provides a binary trace facility (BTF) that permits the gathering of trace information in a production environment with a minimal impact on performance. The BTF is useful for both customers and development teams because its efficiency facilitates leaving a basic level of trace on all the time; thus, it is frequently the case that the data necessary for troubleshooting a problem has been captured the first time it occurs.

The binary trace facility (BTF) is rule-based, and deeper tracing can be enabled based on conditions detected at runtime. The BTF can:

Use the trace data generated by default.
Use the cell custom property to capture additional debug information and not impact your performance.

Do not modify the trace-cfg.xml file syntax. Instead, use of the cell custom properties to control the BTF. The trace-cfg.xml contains the initial trace enablement settings used by the trace facility. After being loaded, trace-cfg.xml is not loaded again by the JVM..
If we restart the server all btrace files will disappear and get regenerated from scratch.
The trace command has two main parameters:

The "read" parameter: Reads the BTF file and displays it.
The "info" parameter: Displays information about what types of information are going to be printed.

Tasks
To translate the binary trace files that are produced by the BTF into a human readable form.
cd app_server_root/bin/trace
app_server_root/bin/trace read <logDirectory> [<traceSpec>]

<logDirectory> Path to a server log directory.
<traceSpec> Trace specification, which is a comma-separated list of elements of the form <groupOrRecord>[<:traceLevel>], where groupOrRecord specifies the name of a group or record, and traceLevel identifies the level of debug desired, as defined by the group or record.
-filePrefix Indicates that a non-default trace file prefix name is being supplied.
<prefix> Trace file prefix name. The default is btrace

For example, to read the btrace files in the current directory for all records,
cd app_server_root/bin
trace read .

To see all btrace in the http group in the logs from the current directory, down to level 2 trace...
cd app_server_root/bin/
trace read . http:2
To get a description of everything that can be traced...
cd app_server_root/bin/
trace info [<groupOrRecordOrFieldName>] [-depth <maxDepth>]

<groupOrRecordOrFieldName> Name of a group, record, or field for which information is needed.
-depth Indicates that a maximum depth is being supplied.
<maxDepth> The depth specified will include all groups, records, and fields that are within the specified depth from the initial argument provided.
Use the field descriptors to limit your output, and -depth to further refine that by limiting how deep into the hierarchy the filter should go. If we do not specify a maximum depth, all of the information is displayed.

For example, for information on the http.request group, but no deeper,:
app_server_root/bin/trace info http.request -depth 1
Subtopics

Intelligent Management: binary trace facility custom properties
We can modify trace dynamically and persistently by setting a cell custom property.

Intelligent Management: binary trace facility custom properties

The "read" parameter:	Reads the BTF file and displays it.
The "info" parameter:	Displays information about what types of information are going to be printed.

<logDirectory>	Path to a server log directory.
<traceSpec>	Trace specification, which is a comma-separated list of elements of the form <groupOrRecord>[<:traceLevel>], where groupOrRecord specifies the name of a group or record, and traceLevel identifies the level of debug desired, as defined by the group or record.
-filePrefix	Indicates that a non-default trace file prefix name is being supplied.
<prefix>	Trace file prefix name. The default is btrace

<groupOrRecordOrFieldName>	Name of a group, record, or field for which information is needed.
-depth	Indicates that a maximum depth is being supplied.
<maxDepth>	The depth specified will include all groups, records, and fields that are within the specified depth from the initial argument provided. Use the field descriptors to limit your output, and -depth to further refine that by limiting how deep into the hierarchy the filter should go. If we do not specify a maximum depth, all of the information is displayed.