Logging and Operational Reporting Best Practice

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I am currently involved in a project where we are implermenting the following webMethods components:

  • webMethods Integration Server v6.0.1 (currently on service pack 2)
  • webMethods Mainframe v6.0.2 using CICS Sockets

Note: Both of these components are implemented on Solaris servers.

The queries that I have are:

  1. When implementing webMethods, what is the best practice approach / experiences gained for implementing logging for the purposes of operational reporting? Is it best to stick with the out-of-the-box audit logging that comes with webMethods, or is it more effective to generate custom services for logging and utilise libraries such as Log4J?
  • Is there any performance advantages / disadvantages with doing this?
  • If required to log specific attributes as part of Operational Reporting requirements, that are not logged as part the the standard audit logging (e.g. Customer ID that is part of the pipeline data) what is the best way to approach this.
  1. Similarly for Exception handling and error logging, from experience, what has been the most effective approach to exception handling and the logging of errors. Currently we are proposing to use Try-Catch blocks implemented using sequence steps in flow (as per the webMethods best practice document). Is this the best approach?

Any assistance is appreciated.

-Cameron

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