Configuring Selective Tracing Using Fusion Middleware Control To configure

12-34 Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrators Guide 13 Diagnosing Problems 13-1 13 Diagnosing Problems This chapter describes how to use the Diagnostic Framework to collect and manage information about a problem so that you can resolve it or send it to Oracle Support for resolution. This chapter contains the following topics: ■ Understanding the Diagnostic Framework ■ How the Diagnostic Framework Works ■ Configuring the Diagnostic Framework ■ Investigating, Reporting, and Solving a Problem

13.1 Understanding the Diagnostic Framework

Oracle Fusion Middleware includes a Diagnostic Framework which aids in detecting, diagnosing, and resolving problems. The problems that are targeted in particular are critical errors such as those caused by code bugs, metadata corruption, customer data corruption, deadlocked threads, and inconsistent state. When a critical error occurs, it is assigned an incident number, and diagnostic data for the error such as log files are immediately captured and tagged with this number. The data is then stored in the Automatic Diagnostic Repository ADR, where it can later be retrieved by incident number and analyzed. The goals of the Diagnostic Framework are: ■ First-failure diagnosis ■ Limiting damage and interruptions after a problem is detected ■ Reducing problem diagnostic time ■ Reducing problem resolution time ■ Simplifying customer interaction with Oracle Support The Diagnostic Framework includes the following technologies: ■ Automatic capture of diagnostic data upon first failure: For critical errors, the ability to capture error information at first failure greatly increases the chance of a quick problem resolution and reduced downtime. The Diagnostic Framework automatically collects diagnostics, such as thread dumps, DMS metric dumps, and WebLogic Diagnostics Framework WLDF server image dumps. Such diagnostic data is similar to the data collected by airplane black box flight recorders. When a problem is detected, alerts are generated and the fault diagnosability 13-2 Oracle Fusion Middleware Administrators Guide infrastructure is activated to capture and store diagnostic data. The data is stored in a file-based repository and is accessible with command-line utilities. ■ Standardized log formats: Standardized log formats using the ODL log file format across all Oracle Fusion Middleware components allows administrators and Oracle Support personnel to use a single set of tools for problem analysis. Problems are more easily diagnosed, and downtime is reduced. ■ Diagnostic rules: Each component defines diagnostic rules that are used to evaluate whether a given log message should result in an incident being created and which dumps should be executed. The diagnostic rules also indicate whether an individual dump should be created synchronously or asynchronously. ■ Incident detection log filter: The incident detection log filter implements the java.util.logging filter. It inspects each log message to see if an incident should be created, basing its decision on the diagnostic rules for components and applications. ■ Incident packaging service IPS and incident packages: The IPS enables you to automatically and easily gather the diagnostic data—log files, dumps, reports, and more—pertaining to a critical error that has a corresponding incident, and package the data into a zip file for transmission to Oracle Support. All diagnostic data relating to a critical error that has been detected by the Diagnostics Framework is captured and stored as an incident in ADR. The incident packaging service identifies the required files automatically and adds them to the zip file. Before creating the zip file, the IPS first collects diagnostic data into an intermediate logical structure called an incident package. Packages are stored in the Automatic Diagnostic Repository. If you choose to, you can access this intermediate logical structure, view and modify its contents, add or remove additional diagnostic data at any time, and when you are ready, create the zip file from the package and upload it to Oracle Support. ■ Integration with WebLogic Diagnostics Framework WLDF: The Oracle Fusion Middleware Diagnostics Framework integrates with some features of WebLogic Diagnostics Framework WLDF, including the capturing of WebLogic Server images on detection of critical errors. WLDF is a monitoring and diagnostic framework that defines and implements a set of services that run within WebLogic Server processes and participate in the standard server life cycle. Using WLDF, you can create, collect, analyze, archive, and access diagnostic data generated by a running server and the applications deployed within its containers. This data provides insight into the run-time performance of servers and applications and enables you to isolate and diagnose faults when they occur. Oracle Fusion Middleware Diagnostics Framework integrates with the following components of WLDF: – WLDF Watch and Notification, which watches specific logs and metrics for specified conditions and sends a notification when a condition is met. There are several types of notifications, including JMX notification and a notification to create a Diagnostic Image. Oracle Fusion Middleware Diagnostics Framework integrates with the WLDF Watch and Notification component to create incidents. – Diagnostic Image Capture, which gathers the most common sources of the key server state used in diagnosing problems. It packages that state into a single artifact, the Diagnostic Image. With Oracle Fusion Middleware Diagnostics Framework, it writes the artifact to ADR.