Ingest Logs of Oracle Diagnostic Logging (ODL) Format

Oracle Diagnostic Logging (ODL) is an industry-wide accepted format for writing diagnostic messages to log files. The log file can be in ODL text format or ODL XML format. Most Oracle Fusion Middleware components, Oracle Enterprise Performance Management System products, and other Oracle applications write diagnostic log files in the ODL format.

Oracle Logging Analytics provides Oracle-defined log sources to match the ODL format to be able to support several Oracle applications:

Oracle-defined Source Entity type

FMW OHS Diagnostic Logs (V11)

Oracle HTTP Server

FMW OHS Diagnostic Logs (V12)

FMW OID Directory Control Logs

Oracle Internet Directory

FMW OID Directory Dispatcher Server Logs

FMW OID Directory Replication Server Logs

FMW OID Directory Server Logs

FMW OID Monitor Logs

Fusion Apps Diagnostic Logs

WebLogic Server

FMW BI Publisher Logs

FMW BI JBIPS Logs

FMW WLS Server Diagnostic Logs

Oracle VM Manager Diagnostic Logs

Oracle VM Manager

Overall Flow for Collecting ODL Logs

The following are the high-level tasks for collecting log information from your host:

Create a Source for Diagnostic Logs in ODL Format

Sources define the location of your entity's logs and how to enrich the log entries. To start continuous log collection through the OCI management agents, a source needs to be associated with one or more entities.

  1. Open the navigation menu and click Observability & Management. Under Logging Analytics, click Administration. The Administration Overview page opens.

    The administration resources are listed in the left hand navigation pane under Resources. Click Sources.

    The Sources page opens. Click Create Source.

  2. In the Name field, enter the name of the source.

    Optionally, add a description.

  3. From the Source Type list, select the type Oracle Diagnostic Logging (ODL).

    Use this type for logs that follow the Oracle Diagnostics Logs format. These are typically used for diagnostic logs for Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Applications.

  4. Click the Entity Type field and select the type of entity for this log source. Select the entity type for your log source that most closely matches what you are going to monitor. Avoid selecting composite entity types, for example, Database Cluster. Instead select the entity type Database Instance because the logs are generated at the instance level.
  5. Click the Parser field and select the relevant parser name. For ODL source type, the only parser available is Oracle Diagnostic Logging Format.
  6. In the Include and Exclude tabs, enter the following information:
    • In the Included Patterns tab, click Add to specify file name patterns for this source.

      Enter the file name pattern and description.

      You can enter parameters within braces {}, such as {AdrHome}, as a part of the file name pattern. Oracle Logging Analytics replaces these parameters in the include pattern with entity properties when the source is associated with an entity. The list of possible parameters is defined by the entity type. If you create your own entity types, you can define your own properties. When you create an entity, you will be prompted to give value for each property for that entity. You can also add your own custom properties per entity, if required. Any of these properties can be used as parameters here in the Included Patterns.

      For example for a given entity where {AdrHome} property is set to /u01/oracle/database/, the include pattern {AdrHome}/admin/logs/*.log will be replaced with /u01/oracle/database/admin/logs/*.log for this specific entity. Every other entity on the same host can have a different value for {AdrHome}, which would result in a completely different set of log files to be collected for each entity.

      You can associate a source with an entity only if the parameters that the source requires in the patterns has a value for the given entity.

      You can configure warnings in the log collection for your patterns. In the Send Warning drop-down list, select the situation in which the warning must be issued:

      • For each pattern that has an issue: When you have set multiple include patterns, a log collection warning will be sent for each file name pattern which doesn't match.

      • Only if all patterns have issues: When you have set multiple include patterns, a log collection warning will be sent only if all the file name patterns don't match.

    • You can use an excluded pattern when there are files in the same location that you don’t want to include in the source definition. In the Excluded Patterns tab, click Add to define patterns of log file names that must be excluded from this log source.

      For example, there’s a file with the name audit.aud in the directory that you configured as an include source (/u01/app/oracle/admin/rdbms/diag/trace/). In the same location, there’s another file with the name audit-1.aud. You can exclude any files with the pattern audit-*.aud.

  7. Click Create Source.