Re: Using XML for audit trail

Mont Rothstein <[email protected]> Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:19:28 -0800
Newsgroups gmane.comp.windows.devel.dotnet.advanced
Message-ID <[email protected]>
John,

Thanks for the feedback and info.

Do you have any insight into what was causing the failures?  Our logs are
unlikely to be anything close to 10 MB in size.

Thanks,
-Mont


On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 11:41 PM, John Brett <[email protected]>wrote:

> Hi Mont,
>
> I've just been through the same thought exercise.
>
> I concluded that xml simply isn't a good format to use for a continual
> logging system.
> My conclusions were, in part, based upon seeing an internal system
> that did pretty much what you're describing fail periodically, leaving
> behind a log file that was no longer valid xml (and therefore couldn't
> be parsed by all the standard tools we had in place). Trying to read a
> 10Mb sort-of xml document in a text editor to diagnose faults is
> pretty tedious.
>
> My solution was to use a different serialisation format (structured
> text) that was record-oriented, and then to have a separate phase
> which could convert a given snapshot of the log into xml.
>
> HTH,
>  John
>
> 2009/2/27 Mont Rothstein <[email protected]>:
> > I want to use XML for an audit trail.  The problem I am having is that I
> > would like to only use append operations to write to the file.
> >
> > My thought had been to write an element to each line, with sub-elements
> and
> > the end on the same line.  I could then parse each line when reading the
> > file.  The problem is I can't figure out how to get the XML for a
> > node/element/document, and all of the sub-elements, to write out as a
> single
> > line.
> >
> > Alternatively  I could use some other mechanism to parse the file and
> read
> > each audit entry (xml element with sub-elements) in sequence.
> >
> > Any suggestions on how to either write the XML as a single line or a
> > preferred method for parsing elements in a file one at a time?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > -Mont
> >
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