Ask project teams how they investigate a problem and they often say… I added lots of debugging log messages and replicated the steps for a single record.

This works well for a single record but it can have painful consequences in the real world of a production environment when 100 records are being processed at the same time.

It can lead to very confusing messages and logs that failover causing important clues to be lost.

I have blogged a number of times about inappropriate log messages and they can be seen in the article list.

 The whole debugging process needs to be considered.

• How will system administrators trace the operations?
• What if the steps aren’t clear or if the steps can’t be replicated?
• Will the debugging process work if there are lots of other users doing the same operation?
• What if the problem can’t be repeated? …. This happens more often that people like to admit. In some cases the users don’t know which of their operations contribute to the problem
• Where are potential clues?
• What can be done to provide clues?
• Will the process work in the real world?

My last article talked about the need to talk to project teams and be involved in the delivery process.

It is important to test the support processes before the go-live, particularly with large amounts of test data. Tools like Maxtaf are very good for simulating lots of users using the system and mean that support staff can see what the logs contain when there are large numbers of users.

Vetasi have had considerable success with this software in speeding up the delivery process.

Also consider the documentation that you will need. This article talks about the types of things to consider and prepare for.

If you want to learn more about Maxtaf then Alin Bostan has a lot of experience with this and offers Maxtaf related consultancy.

Disclosure - I have worked with Alin Bostan for a number of years and had Maxtaf related training

Confirmed for IBM champion for 2018

Thanks to the various people who nominated me and also supported this blog over the past year. Please do keep viewing and liking the articles as it shows IBM that people are benefiting from it.

This years webexes – stay tuned for details

I’m in discussions about the topics for this year’s webexes so keep an eye on the blog for details.

This blog series

This article is one of a series of articles to help system administrators understand the Maximo logs and the underlying architecture.

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Disclaimer

The postings on this blog are my own and don't necessarily represent Vetasi's positions, strategies or opinions.