IBM Support Assistant
IBM Support Assistant (ISA) provides quick access to product, education, and support resources that can help you answer questions and resolve problems with IBM software products on own, without needing to contact IBM Support. Different product-specific plug-ins let you customize IBM Support Assistant for the particular products you have installed. IBM Support Assistant can also collect system data, log files, and other information to help IBM Support determine the cause of a particular problem.
Data collection and symptom analysis
There are two methods for collecting data and analyzing symptoms for problem determination scenarios. The first method is IBM Support Assistant Lite for WebSphere Portal, which provides automatic data collection and symptom analysis support for problem determination scenarios. This tool collects and analyzes information pertinent to a problem scenario to help identify the origin of the problem being encountered. The second method is running a task that can collect and optionally send the data for you.
Manual creation of aspect-enabled JAR files
IBM Support Assistant Lite is the preferred way to create and deploy aspect-enabled JAR files for troubleshooting because the tool automates the process for you. If you do not want to install IBM Support Assistant Lite, or you are running on a platform that does not support IBM Support Assistant Lite, you can manually create own aspect-enabled JAR files using either the aspect source files that ship with IBM WebSphere Portal, or aspect source files provided by IBM Support.