The trace facility in Intelligent Miner® helps IBM® to locate an error by writing
information about an error situation to a file. This information consists
of trace messages.
The trace facility is configured by means of two environment variables.
These are as follows:
- IDM_MX_TRACEFILE.
This specifies the name of the file where trace information is written.
If the variable is not defined or is empty, trace is written to the
default file idmMxTrace.log in the temporary directory
of the system. If the file does not exist, it is created. If the trace
file cannot be written, tracing is switched off, without an error
message or warning.
- IDM_MX_TRACELEVEL.
This defines the level of tracing. It must contain one of the following
values (not case-sensitive):
- MINIMUM: Tracing is switched off. However, in some severe error
situations this setting is ignored, and some trace messages explaining
the error are written. This is the default value.
- BASIC: Coarse trace information (for example, received data, DB2® calls, and so on) is written.
- MOST: More detailed trace information (for example, call stacks,
parameters, and so on) is written.
- ALL: All available information is printed. Note that this tends
to be rather lengthy.
IDM_MX_TRACELEVEL determines the filtering
of trace messages.
IDM_MX_TRACELEVEL is effectively
an on/off switch for tracing.
Note: If you do not set IDM_MX_TRACELEVEL to MINIMUM,
the performance can decrease considerably.
Since trace messages are controlled by means of environment variables,
concurrent mining runs write to the same trace file.
The trace message that is written to the trace file consists of:
- The name of the component that issued the trace message
- A time stamp
- The trace message itself
Additionally, basic system information is written once per trace.