Parse Webi Logs

[Former Member]

Has anyone ever attempted to parse a BO webi log file with powershell (or other windows scripting language) to get something in a more friendly output that could be passed on to an internal support team for review?  For example, when I review our log files I see a variety of error messages that might be something I need to pay attention to as a system admin or they might be 'training' type errors that I can hand off to our support team to get with the user.  I want to parse out the 'useful' info and ignore the noise ( such as excess info, 'soft errors', or successes).  Plus, the support team does not have access to our webi logs/webi servers.

I am self-teaching as I go with powershell and since I have other scripts running in powershell, I started with that (there could be a better way).  I would just like to extract the date, server, full error information and username and format it to a list.  There is just no easy way that I can figure out to identify a single log entry line... or to know where the error information 'really' ends.  Maybe I'm overlooking the obvious though - which is very possible as these webi logs make my eyes go buggy!

Has anyone ever tried anything like this and can share some insight? we are on 4.0 sp7 patch 7 if it makes a difference in log format or anything.

thanks in advance,

Missy

[Former Member]

Just thought I'd post an update to this...

We wrote a vb script to parse through webi log files and output to excel.  It works really well and definitely helps review issues.  In addition to that, we were able to obtain metrics from this parsing - in other words, we are keeping track now of which user gets which error, as well as how many times overall an error is received.

So now we can see that regularly users get WIS 30270 ( a few hundred per day), for example.  They aren't always reporting these errors (not sure if they are not seeing them on-screen or if they are just numb to them, but we hear about maybe 5 per week), but I am concerned as to WHY we are seeing so many errors written to the log files.

In addition to that one, we see a lot of WIS 30600, WIS 10901, WIS 10008, WIS 30111, etc. show up too.

I will probably open an incident with support, but just thought I'd update my message board posting in case anyone else is interested in doing/learning the same... or has any ideas on these errors.

[former_member182521]

Hello Missy, Just give a try with GLF viewer as below. http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/remote-supportability/blog/2012/11/06/how-to-generate-and-c... You might have set  tracelog level to High as a result you are getting log for each and every action performed. Regards Mani

[Former Member]

Hi Mani,

I do like the GLF viewer - that works well for overall analysis.  I didn't think it showed additional details on error messages though - does it? Or notes what is shown on-screen vs just logged? That would be helpful to know if there was a way to figure that out...

With regards to parsing, we were interested in it to monitor activity more so than debug an issue.  Our vb script works well, but I just see all these errors now and I'm not sure what they mean or why users are getting them, and whether or not they are seeing them on screen.  However, by viewing metrics on the errors, it helps us see if we have users that might need additional training or if any are hitting the same problem over and over again that might be something we can help resolve.

Our tracing is set to "unspecified" - I'm not really sure what level of detail that gives vs doesn't give... but if there is a level that we could set it at that gives the 'right' amount of details - successful activity and error activity, without the extra 'fluff', that would be nice   It is helpful to see, for example, if a user gets an error and then is able to rebound and complete the action successfully ultimately.

Thanks,

Missy

[former_member182521]

Love to hear back from you Missy. Please refer the blog below for tracelog setting. http://scn.sap.com/community/bi-platform/blog/2013/01/31/configuring-trace-logs-in-businessobjects-4... Your tracelog setting is being set at BO_trace.ini file. More over for all your WIS-......  errors, kindly refer error messages guide. Regards Mani

[Former Member]

Hi Mani,

Thanks for the link to the trace settings - yet another good resource you have provided.  Our ini file is set as follows:

active = true;

importance = xl;

alert = true;

severity = 'E';

//keep = false;

//size = 100 * 1000;

So, mostly defaults.  Not sure the exact difference in context between s, m, l, and xl, but even with these settings noted above, in our webiserver log, for example, I will get a line that looks like this:

|12671c8e-cc1c-5164-2b7f-d36028aea63d|2014 07 30 17:14:58:479|-0400|Error| |>>| | |webiserver_SERVERA.WebIntelligenceProcessingServer| 9984|3984|| |2|0|2|0|BIlaunchpad.WebApp|SERVERA:7616:65.106749:1|Webi SDK.CorbaServerImpl.doProcess()|SERVERA:7616:65.106749:2|webiserver_SERVERA.WebIntelligenceProcessingServer.loadStateMDP|localhost:9984:3984.119276:1|CtC8xxN8nEPIkk05usjbm5s1a0fb|||||||||||AsyncCaller:WebiSession[AS6LS2uphS9GilVoKXDMP9k]: loadState by user 'userA' on document 'Webi Report A'  AsyncCaller.cpp:181:bool __cdecl async::AsyncCaller::startRequest(const char *,int): TraceLog message 21020

So what part of this is an error? To me, this looks like normal processing steps. Another example, would be:

|1404a918-2cad-9184-6a6b-decec93efe1e|2014 07 30 17:58:06:861|-0400|Error|Error|>>|E| |webiserver_SERVERA.WebIntelligenceProcessingServer| 37332|35556|| |12|0|2|0|BIlaunchpad.WebApp|SERVERB:8700:75751.68935664:1|Webi SDK.CorbaServerImpl.doProcess()|SERVERB:8700:75751.68935664:3|webiserver_SERVERA.WebIntelligenceProcessingServer3.loadStateMDP|localhost:37332:35556.58574:1|CoWFD4_SSEn5rjTHJ2XQgkU41bdff6|||||||||||**ERROR:RequestProc:user: userC, doc: "", error stream: [kctRequestProc.cpp;777]  SharedContextImpl.cpp:227:__cdecl SharedContextImpl::~SharedContextImpl(void): TraceLog message 38279

That one, I can see how it is an error, generic or otherwise, it is clearly an error.

What we have been doing with our vb script, is parsing the log files by searching line by line for the word 'user' and then outputting a subset of that line to excel, figuring this gives us errors the user experienced.  What we were surprised to see is the sheer number of errors that the user is supposedly experiencing.  What is also surprising, is that it doesn't appear that the user sees these messages on screen all the time, given that they don't complain and/or we having someone working with the user who verifies no messages on screen appeared, but I can match up timestamps with the log files and their actions performed and see that an error was hit.

Our initial goal with this was to see what users may need more training, but we also have been using it as a quick way to monitor things too.  So for example, if a user calls and complains they got an error, I'll use this first to help identify which server they were on and check out server related 'things' and then I use the glf viewer to view the full log if I need to analyze things further.

Also, here's the link I have for the error message guide:

http://help.sap.com/businessobject/product_guides/boexir4/en/xi4_error_messages_en.pdf

For example, WIS 30600 is not in there.  Is there a different guide?

Thanks,

Missy