Windows 7 saves log files in Xml format (2)

Convenience 3: Uniform management of log files can be realized.

In the enterprise, not only the operating system will generate log files. Other application systems also generate relevant log files. Log files are also generated, such as database systems, ERP systems, financial management software, and the like. When there are many enterprise application servers, the distributed management log files are not only inefficient, but also easily lead to the omission of key information. To this end, it is a good solution to manage the log files generated by each system and service through a unified log server platform. But to achieve this goal, the biggest obstacle is the incompatible log file format generated by each system. If the Oracle database system, the Windows operating system, etc. all store log files in their respective formats, then different tools are needed to open these log files for querying, which is very inconvenient to handle. And if these applications support log files in XML format, then it will be very convenient.

Since Microsoft Windows 7 operating system launched a log file in XML format, I am currently working on a project. It is to implement the same software to manage the Windows 7 operating system, Oracle database system and other log files of application services that support XML log files. In fact, the principle is very simple, is to automatically transfer the log files generated by these systems to a log server, and then the database will automatically import these log files into the database server. And use the database triggers and other tools to carry out some analysis, automatic warning and so on. This can reduce the time it takes for the system administrator to view related logs from time to time, reducing the workload of the system administrator.

So Microsoft introduced a log file in XML format, which makes it possible to implement a unified management operating system and other non-Microsoft product log files. Because the XML format is a structured data file, there are many vendors that support it. However, the XML format file has been out for a long time, and should be before the XP operating system comes out. Why is this technology not implemented on the XP operating system? I am confused about this. However, in Windows7, I finally hoped for everyone. It’s better to be late than never.

Convenience 4: Support for WEB is better.

Sometimes a system administrator is often unable to perform an analysis of related log records. You need to complete the relevant log analysis work with the database administrator or other application software owners. This is mainly caused by the continuous refinement of the division of system management personnel. There are a lot of project management software, which are all based on WEB. This will be of great help to the system administrator if the log files are combined with these WEB project management software.

And now the XML format file is a developed text-based format that can be transferred using HTTP like Html without any adjustments to the existing network structure. It can be seen that the support of the WEB service in the XML format file is very good. The system administrator only needs to save the log file as a file in XML format without any adjustments.

In addition to these features, it is not necessary to explain that the XML file compression is better. Because the content of the system log is often more, if you want to save the complete log information, you often need to occupy more hard disk space. And if you use XML format files, you can often use less hard disk space than other files. This is mainly because the compression of XML files is better. Because the tags describing the data structure can be reused in the XML file, the hard disk space can be reduced by high compression ratio.

However, when using XML files, you need to pay attention to a problem, that is, some IE browsers do not support XML files very well. If you use the Netscape 8 browser to view the XML file, it will be blank and you will not be able to view its specific content. This issue has been fixed in the Netscape 8.02 release.