User trace

User trace is one of two main types of optional trace that are available in IBM® App Connect Enterprise and provides more information than that provided by the entries that are written to the Administration log. User trace is inactive by default; you must activate it explicitly by using a command, the IBM App Connect Enterprise web user interface, or a REST API command.

For information about logs, see Logs. For information about controlling user trace, see User trace example.

Typically, you use user trace for debugging your applications, as it can trace integration nodes, integration servers, and deployed message flows.

When you activate user trace, you cause additional processing for every activity in the component that you are tracing. Large quantities of data are generated by the components. Expect to see some effect on performance while user trace is active. You can limit this additional processing by restricting the time during which trace is active.

The user trace log files

When trace is active, information is recorded in the user trace log files in plain text format.

For independent integration servers, the location of the trace logs is workpath/config/common/log, where workpath is the work directory of the integration server as specified on the IntegrationServer command.

For integration servers that are managed by an integration node, the trace logs are written to MQSI_WORKPATH/Common/log/integration_node_name.integration_server_name.userTrace.0.txt

Note: For information about checking and changing the location of the work path; see Changing the location of the IBM App Connect Enterprise working directory.

Trace data is written to files with the format integration_server.name.userTrace.number.txt where:

name: The name of your integration server as specified on the --name of the IntegrationServer command.
number: An integer in the range 0 through 4. There are 5 user trace log files and IBM App Connect Enterprise writes to these files in a rotational manner. When user trace is started, trace data is written to the integration_server.name.userTrace.0.txt file. When the integration_server.name.userTrace.0.txt file becomes full, user trace data is then written to the integration_server.name.userTrace.1.txt file. The process continues until the integration_server.name.userTrace.4.txt file is full, at which point user trace data is written to the integration_server.name.userTrace.0.txt file and the existing data there is overwritten. The process continues in this rotational manner until user trace is stopped.

Using a Trace node

If you include a Trace node in your message flows when you are developing and testing them, this option not only gives you the ability to trace messages and activity in the flow, but also allows you to specify an alternative target file for the trace contents to isolate the detail in which you are interested. For details of how to use and configure a Trace node, see Trace node and Switching Trace nodes on and off.