Cloud Integration – Setting the Log Level for Message Processing

With the June 21st, 2017 release of SAP Cloud Integration a set of capabilities have been released targeting to simplify troubleshooting in message processing. This blog gives an overview of the new features delivered with the June 21st, 2017 release and provides best practices and examples on how to use them.

The message processing log is an essential artifact for troubleshooting in message processing. Till date setting the log level for message processing was performed per integration flow in the Designer. Setting the log level required a redeployment of the respective integration flow decelerating the ad-hoc analysis of problems during message processing. In the worst case it even resulted into a service disruption for the respective integration scenario.

With the most recent version of SAP Cloud Integration the log level for the message processing log can be set without the need to redeploy the integration flow. Users can set the log level for a specific integration flow in the “Manage Integration Content” page of the Web-based Monitor (see product documentation for more details). Once the user saves the configured log level the changes take effect immediately. A redeployment of the integration flow is no longer necessary.

The user can choose between the following log levels: None, Info and Debug

The default log level is “Info”. All newly created integration flows will be logged with “Info” upon their initial deployment. For existing integration flows which are already deployed on the system the configured log level will be kept and can be viewed in the “Manage Integration Content” page of the Web-based Monitor. The following table illustrates on how the current log level matches with the log level previously offered:

Previous Log Level      Current Log Level

No Logging                     None

Error Events                    Info

All Events                        Debug

In case the integration flow is removed from the system the respective log level is removed as well. To retain the configured log-level it is required to redeploy an integration flow.

The integration flow tracing capability only works in case log level “Debug” is set for a certain integration flow. Only if log level “Debug” is set all messages processed for the integration flow can also be traced using the integration flow tracing capability.

Besides setting the log level in the “Manage Integration Content” page of the Web-based Monitor the log level can be set via remote API as well. More information on the API signature as well as some example queries can be found in the product documentation.

SAP recommends to log message processing for productive integration scenarios with log level “Info” (default log level). This ensures that sufficient log data is available for troubleshooting.

However, in certain situations it might be required to increase the log level for single messages (e.g. resend a message with increased log level for troubleshooting). This can be achieved by setting a message header attribute “SAP_MessageProcessingLogLevel” with the appropriated log level (“None”, “Info” or “Debug”). The parameter needs to be set before the message is getting processed by the respective integration flow. Changing the log level while the message is getting processed is not possible. This allows to set the log level for certain messages with a log level which is different to what is configured for the integration flow.

I hope you will enjoy using the new capabilities. In case of questions or feedback please feel free to comment on this blog.