Application Logging

Outperform Planning provides the ability to log events at a detailed level. The logging can point to a file, the Microsoft Event Viewer, or both. Logging can be set per category. By default, the standard error is proposed for all categories and is normally enough for further investigation of crashes.

To turn on application logging, you must be an administrator.

1. Log in as an administrator on the machine that runs Outperform Planning. This can be the user's desktop machine but quite often Outperform Planning runs from a server. Then, Outperform Planning is deployed to the end user via a terminal server deployment approach such as Citrix.
2. Go to the Program Files\Outperform\Outperform Planning folder.
3. Start Admin.exe.
4. Choose Application log.
5. Choose the folder destination for the log files. As shown, the log file will be a maximum of 1 MB per user at any point in time. When the log file is full it will be backed up next to the file and logging starts in a new file. There is one backup per user, and the next rotation will overwrite the previous backup.
6. Note that logging to Microsoft's Event Viewer is less useful. Only fatal and error messages are reported. The Event Viewer does not provide more information, so it is of no extra value for testing. However, in a production environment, IT managers can couple the Event Viewer to notifications and thereby remotely monitor and detect issues.
7. For testing, choose option Debug (all categories). This gives a verbose log of what Outperform Planning is doing. It also gives detailed stack traces when problems occur. It does not influence performance. When testing reveals a problem, send the debug log file to development. The Debug option is recommended for all Outperform employees and consultants.
8. To know what is happening between Outperform Planning and the database, choose the Trace option for the DATA category. This will trace all communication with the database. This will slow down performance considerably. Setting this option is useful when you are customizing reports and can’t figure out why something does not work. The traces are logged in such a way they can be copied and pasted into SQL Server Management Studio for execution.
9. To track performance, you can choose the Trace option for the PERF category. This will seriously slow down the application. However, the traced time spans are accurate for what the application would do without tracing.
10. Because it slows down Outperform Planning, Trace is not remembered and only applies to the running version.