Summary of Network logging for Java desktop application

I thought a recap on logging for Java desktop applications might be helpful.

Will Sargent and Vitor Buitoni both recommended using log4j. Log4j  has
several client and server side options one of which is a unix syslog
appender. The fire and forget nature of unix syslog which runs over
unconfirmed UDP is particularly appealing to me since some machines on which
the app is installed might not be able to reach the logging server at all.
Using syslog should reduce the risk of destabilizing the app as mentioned by
Peter Booth. One concern with using log4j, is that we are currently using J2SE
logging framework provided by Sun, switching to log4j would require updating
logging code throughout the app.

Jeff Kesselman said that he was perfectly satisfied with the J2SE logging
framework, but didn't say what he recommended using on the server side.

Peter Booth recommended Capistrano (http://www.capify.org/), which is a Ruby
based tool for automating tasks using SSH. One thing I forgot to mention is
that my app runs on Windows. If I have understood Peter's suggestion,
correctly implementing his idea with Capistrano would require installing an
SSH server on each Windows box on which the my app runs. In my case, this is
not a realistic option.

Thanks to all those who took the time to reply.

    Frank Harper
On 10/20/07, Peter Booth <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Do you really want to make your application's reliability and
> performance
> dependent on the health of the network logging mechanism? If
>
> Call me conservative but I would much prefer to log locally and use a
> decoupled mechanism for log file aggregation. Capistrano, for example
> can make this trivial across OSes.
>
> Peter
>
> On Oct 19, 2007, at 10:41 AM, Frank Harper wrote:
>
> > I have a java desktop application that is installed locally on users
> > machines via Java Web Start, and would like to centralize the
> > logging to
> > facilitate diagnosing bugs.
> >
> > The app uses the standard java logging framework that comes with J2SE.
> > Apparently with this logging framework the standard way to do network
> > logging is to use java.util.logging.SocketHandler. I couldn't find any
> > complete examples on the Web, and the documentation is completely
> > mute about
> > what should be running on the server side to collect the
> > information sent by
> > SocketHandler.
> >
> > So, have any of you done network logging in Java, and what software
> > did you
> > use? Did you use J2SE+SocketHandler, classic unix syslog, Log4J, or
> > something better/different? And in particular what software did you
> > run on
> > the log server?
> >
> > Thanks
> >   Frank
> >
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