System Alerts, Metrics, and Logs

Overview of System Alerts, Metrics, and Logs

The System Alerts, Metrics, and Logs screens provide information that can help you diagnose potential problems. For example, configuration issues, overdue routine maintenance tasks, and invalid data can cause serious problems requiring either an automated response or manual intervention.

Oracle E-Business Suite applications can report these potential problems as system alerts to Oracle Applications Manager. These alerts can then be tracked in OAM, and administrators can classify alerts as open or closed, as well as keep notes on the steps taken to resolve underlying problems.

In addition, some problems may be more easily detected through external analysis of performance metrics. External analysis allows for easier comparison of current and historical metric values, consideration of metrics from multiple products and components, and end-user defined exception triggers. Such exceptions could include decreasing transaction throughput for a component or excessive completion times for a business process.

System Alerts

Navigation: Site Map > >Monitoring > System Alerts (under Current Activity)

Components in an Applications System such as concurrent programs, forms, service instances, or functions can post exception messages during specific error conditions as defined by the developer of the component. The term "System Alert" denotes a grouping of such exceptions having the same message. The term "Occurrence" is used to denote each member exception of such a group. Each alert is associated with a Severity (Critical, Error or Warning) and a Category (System or Product).

This page shows a summary of the system alerts as well as a list of new alerts.

Alerts are classified by Severity level:

Alerts are also marked as New or Open. "New" indicates that the alert has just been posted in the system. "Open" indicates the alert is being resolved.

In the Summary region, Alerts are grouped according to their severity and status of New or Open. The New or Open column indicates how many alerts of the given severity exist. You can click on the number to drill down to details on the alerts.

When a new exception is posted, if an alert already exists with the same message and is in New or Open state, then the new exception is considered an occurrence of the existing alert. If an alert with the same message does not exist then a new one is created (with the state New) and this exception becomes the first occurrence of this alert. A notification is also sent to subscriptions for the newly created alert.

You can change the state of alerts (along with the associated occurrences) in OAM. You can change the state of a new alert to Open to indicate the exception has been acknowledged and the problem is being resolved. Once the problem is resolved you can change the state of the alert to Closed. You can also add notes to alerts; for example, to indicate how the problem was resolved.

You can search for alerts, search for occurrences, and view the notification setup for alerts using the buttons provided.

System Alert Flood Control

Oracle Applications Manager provides the System Alerts feature to inform system administrators of potential problems in Oracle E-Business Suite. For the Oracle Application Object Library messages logged at the level of Unexpected, OAM can raise system alerts. Ideally, system administrators should actively look at these alerts and close them once issue is resolved. However if for some reason, the alerts are not closed, too many new system alerts can flood the system with alerts, occurrences, business events, and notifications. Oracle E-Business Suite provides a mechanism to control the count of new system alerts to avoid a system alert flood.

By default, the system will raise only 500 new alerts. Once this limit is reached for new system alerts, no new alerts or notifications will be raised and a message will be displayed on System Alert and Metric page. To re-enable the alerting, a system administrator should change the status of existing new alerts from OAM. Oracle E-Business Suite also allows system administrators to change the default threshold by using the System Alert Setup button from System Alert and Metrics page can access this page. From the setup page you can also change the number of occurrences per alert. By default only 50 occurrences per alert is logged.

The setup page also provides control to enable the system alert for a particular severity. If critical severity is selected, only critical alerts will be logged. "None" selection will disable the system alert completely and no new alert will be raised.

System Alert Details

This page displays the details associated with a particular system alert. This page includes the summary information for the alert such as severity, category, state, creation date, and the exception message. The occurrences table summarizes the individual occurrences for this alert. You can select an occurrence and click View Details to drill down to the context details for an individual occurrence.

From this page, you can also change the state of the alert as well as navigate to the Add Notes page to add notes to the alert.

Search Alerts

This page allows you to search for alerts by Severity, Category, State and Posted Date. The search results are displayed in the same tabular format as in the New Alerts section in the System Alerts page. You can also add notes or change the state of the alerts displayed in the results table.

To search for occurrences from this page, click Search Occurrences.

Search Occurrences

This page allows the user to search for occurrences of alerts by various criteria. The query criteria are categorized into the following groups:

From the results table on this page, users can drill down to view the context details for each occurrence. In addition, the users can also drill down to view the details for the alert to which each occurrence belongs.

To search for alerts from this page, click Search Alerts.

System Alert Occurrence Details

This page displays the entire context information associate with an individual alert occurrence. This page is divided into the following three sections:

System Metrics

Navigation: Site Map > Monitoring > System Alerts (under Current Activity) > Metrics (tab)

Not all exception conditions can be immediately detected directly within an Oracle E-Business Suite component, but are best detected through external analysis. Some are detected by measuring certain criteria, such as decreasing transaction throughput for a component or excessive completion times for a business process. External analysis allows for easier comparison of current and historical metric values, consideration of metrics from multiple products and components, and end-user defined exception triggers. These exceptions are analogous to "events" in Oracle Enterprise Manager where the use specifies the specific conditions that will trigger an alert.

Simple Search Metrics

You can search for metrics based on Application, Component, Posted After date, or Posted Before date.

Advanced Search Metrics

Click on the Advanced Search button to search for metrics based on detailed criteria.

This page allows the users to search for metrics based on the context information associated with the metrics. The query criteria are categorized into the following groups:

From the results table, users can drill down to view the context details for each metric.

System Metrics Results Table

The System Metrics results table shows information on:

System Metric Details

This page shows the following:

Summary

Context

System Logs

Navigation: Site Map > Monitoring > Logs (under Current Activity)

System Logs are messages that are logged by Oracle E-Business Suite system components.

Log messages contain a comprehensive set of context information and are useful for pinpointing and diagnosing system problems. They can have the following levels (listed from most serious to least serious):

The system logs screens allow you to work with log messages that have been saved to the database. Please note that if logging has been configured to store messages in a middle tier file, such log messages will not be visible on the UI screens. Also, if a log message would normally raise a system alert but the message is sent to a file instead of the database, then the system alert will not be raised.

The following topics describe how to work effectively with the system logs screens:

Performing a Simple Search

In a simple search, you can search for log messages based on the following criteria:

Enter values into the fields as desired and click Go to perform a search.

Performing an Advanced Search

To run an advanced search, click the Advanced Search button. You can use any combination of the following search criteria:

On this page, the LOVs only display values that are reflected in existing log messages. For example, the User LOV only shows users who are specified in one or more log messages. It does not show the entire list of Oracle E-Business Suite users. Furthermore, the LOVs are also filtered by any other search criteria you have entered on the page.

Optionally, you can perform searches that depend on the Component Type. In the Component region, select a Type from the drop-down list. The page will refresh to offer additional search fields. For example, for Concurrent Programs, you can search by Concurrent Program Application or Concurrent Program Name.

Working with Search Results

Viewing Search Results

When you perform a search, the System Log Summary table shows how many log messages were returned and how many are at each log level.

Individual log messages are listed in the System Log Details table. For each log message, the sequence number, module, log level, user, and time are displayed. You can drill down on an individual message or on a user to view details.

Downloading Search Results

To download all returned log messages, click the Download All button. (This includes the full range of log messages, not only those displayed on the current page.) The downloadable file is a comma-delimited CSV file.

To download your choice of currently displayed log messages, select them in the table and click the Download button.

Additionally, you can save all search results by clicking the Add to Support Cart button.

Viewing Log Message Details

Summary

Context

Request Summary

Attachment

In the Attachment region, additional context information (such as environment variables or file versions) may be available in some cases.

Optionally, you can add this page to the Support Cart.

Setting Up Logging

Navigation: Site Map > Monitoring > Logs (under Current Activity ) > Log Setup (button)

On the Log Setup screen, you can configure logging according to user, responsibility, application, or site. Additionally, you can view any Java System Property settings for the current JVM that may be active. Note that Java System Property settings override all other settings.

Setting Up Logging for Users, Responsibilities, or Applications

The following procedure explains how to set up logging for a particular user. The steps are the same for responsibilities or applications. Note that user settings override responsibility settings, responsibility settings override application settings, and application settings override site settings. In the table, null values indicate that the setting is to be inherited from the next higher profile level.

  1. If the User table is not currently displayed, then click the icon to show it.

  2. If there is a blank User Name field, then click the flashlight icon to select a user name. If there is not a blank User Name field, then click the Add Another Row button to add an empty row to the table, then select a user name.

  3. In the Log Enabled field, select null, Yes, or No. A null value means that the setting will be inherited from a higher level profile value.

  4. In the Log Level field, select a log level. Log messages greater than or equal to the specified level will be stored.

  5. (Optional) In the Midtier Log File Name field, type in a valid middle-tier file path. If this field is blank, then log messages will be stored in the database. Note: Server PL/SQL messages are always logged to the database.

  6. (Optional) In the Module field, enter the module for which you want to enable logging. For example, "fnd%".

  7. Click Apply to save your work.

Setting Up Logging for a Site

The following procedure explains how to set up logging for your entire site.

  1. In the Log Enabled field, select null, Yes, or No. (A null value means that the setting will be inherited from a higher level profile value.)

  2. In the Log Level field, select a log level. Log messages greater than or equal to the specified level will be stored. It is strongly recommended that you choose 4 - Exception, 5 - Event, or 6 - Unexpected. Significant system performance issues may arise if logging is enabled at less than 4 - Exception.

  3. (Optional) In the Midtier Log File Name field, type in a valid middle-tier file path. If this field is blank, then log messages will be stored in the database. Note: Server PL/SQL messages are always logged to the database.

  4. (Optional) In the Module field, enter the module for which you want to enable logging. For example, "fnd%".

  5. Click Apply to save your work.