Troubleshooting business process definitions and service flows

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In Business Automation Workflow, you can configure lightweight trace specifications to specify the trace information that you want output to the logs. You can subsequently use the logs to help diagnose problems with the processing of business process definitions (BPDs) and service flows. The trace information in the logs can include the execution times of the various steps in a BPD or service engine, such as the time when a BPD or service flow starts and stops and the amount of time that it takes to complete. The trace information can also include a record of the changes to variables throughout the execution of a process. The logged trace information can also help to identify steps that do not meet their performance goals (such as service invocations) and reduce or eliminate the need to add custom application-level logging to process applications.

Trace settings

Business Automation Workflow trace specifications use the standard application server tracing mechanism, which must be enabled in the normal way.

You can configure the following lightweight trace specifications:

  • WLE.wle_engine (for BPDs)
  • WLE.wle_engine_basic (for BPDs)
  • WLE.wle_svcflow (for service flows)
  • WLE.wle_svcflow_basic (for service flows)
  • WLE.wle_external_service (for external services)
  • WLE.wle_scheduler (for Event Manger)
  • WLE.wle_sched_basic (for Event Manager)
  • com.ibm.bpm.rest.* (for REST APIs)
These trace specifications are described in the following table.
Table 1. Trace specifications for Business Automation Workflow
Trace specifications Trace settings What is logged
WLE.wle_engine_basic=trace_setting FINER The major navigation steps and key data.
FINEST, ALL The major navigation steps and key data, as well as input and output parameter values. It logs the input and output data and associated variable values for process/BPD/services and activity/event/step. Depending on the size of the data, this can impact performance (such as potential data retrieval and writing to the trace file).
CAUTION:
Variables values may contain sensitive data.
WLE.wle_svcflow_basic=trace_setting FINER The major navigation steps and key data.
FINEST, ALL The major navigation steps and key data, as well as input and output parameter values. It logs the input and output data and associated variable values for process/BPD/services and activity/event/step. Depending on the size of the data, this can impact performance (such as potential data retrieval and writing to the trace file).
CAUTION:
Variables values may contain sensitive data.
WLE.wle_external_service=trace_setting ALL The discovery and execution of external services.
WLE.wle_sched_basic=trace_setting FINER The major navigation steps and key data.
FINEST, ALL The major navigation steps and key data, as well as Event Manager task details. Depending on the size of the data, this can impact performance (such as potential data retrieval and writing to the trace file).
WLE.wle_engine=trace_setting FINE, FINER, FINEST, ALL The component trace of the BPD engine, which includes lightweight trace output.
WLE.wle_svcflow=trace_setting FINE, FINER, FINEST, ALL The component trace of the service flow engine, which includes lightweight trace output.
WLE.wle_scheduler=trace_setting FINE, FINER, FINEST, ALL The component trace of the Event Manager, which includes lightweight trace output.
com.ibm.bpm.rest.*=trace_setting ALL The component trace of the REST API. To get lightweight REST API traces, specify the trace setting FINER instead of ALL.
To get a complete set of lightweight trace information for business process definitions, service flows, and Event Manager, specify the following trace settings:
WLE.wle_engine_basic=ALL
WLE.wle_svcflow_basic=ALL
WLE.wle_sched_basic=ALL
com.ibm.bpm.rest.*=FINER

Setting the trace specifications

For specific information about setting the trace specifications for BPDs and REST APIs, see the following topics:

For general information about gathering troubleshooting data for Business Automation Workflow, see the topic Collect troubleshooting data for the IBM Business Process Manager products.

What to send to support

After enabling tracing, recreate your problem, then provide the following files:
  • The WebSphere® Application Server FFDC log, located in the ffdc folder
  • The following log files:
    • SystemOut.log
    • SystemErr.log
    • trace.log
    • For Linux operating systemFor UNIX operating systemOn Linux® and UNIX systems, these files are located in the profile_root/logs/server_name directory.
    • For Windows operating systemOn Windows platforms they are located in the profile_root\logs\server_name directory.

    If your problem scenario causes a lot of logging, backup files for the logs might be created with names, such as SystemOut_07.10.01_11.00.51.log. You can use the administrative console to change the number of backup files that are created and the size of the log files. It might be good to increase both of these values to ensure that you capture all of the data.