Better Logging Equates To Better Apps
Whether you’re designing your own website, or running an application of some variety, it’s absolutely fundamental that you track its movement through the internet. As your application experiences fluctuations in traffic, interfaces with new software, and is expanded upon, varying features of its design features will invariably function how they’re not supposed to. You’re going to get bugs.
Beta testing accompanies all new software because even the best programmers aren’t going to catch everything. If that’s the case anyway, it’s certainly sensible to formalize purifying protocols. It’s a bell-curve that never reaches zero, though. You’ll never hit perfection. There will always be something to address, and so it becomes vital you find means of catching these bugs on a continuing basis.
Logging is the best way to do it. Properly logged errors and exceptions help you to identify where you need to fix something, augment something, subtract something, or whatever happens to be necessary. There are options to monitor applications on the cloud, and specific solutions designed to help you make sense of the information you find.
Following, Three notable logging tactics will be explored to help give you a frame of reference, and initiate more dependable logging practices going forward.
- Log Everything
Compartmentalized logging misses integral fixes, or makes it less likely that trends will be discovered leading to errors. You should log everything you possibly can. Yes, it will produce a lot of data, and sifting through that data can be difficult if you don’t get things properly organized. It’s important to determine the best ways of organizing as fits your DevOps team.
Don’t just log the information which your app generates, though; additionally keep records of statistical relationships within the data you collect. You need to know which areas of the app are generating the most exceptions; especially if you’re having difficulty pinning down the ‘why”. The more information you have, the better you can narrow it down.
- Centralize Logging To One Place Everyone Has Access To
The next tactic dovetails from the previous one. What data you collect needs to be accessible to everybody. Everyone on your DevOps team should be able to access the data from whatever location they happen to be at, provided they’ve got access credentials and a secure web connection. Centralization makes this possible.
If data is all over the place, requiring multiple means of access, it becomes difficult to do anything. Big businesses will sometimes have multiple databases employees must search through, exponentially multiplying the time it takes for them to produce results. Putting all that available information in one place simplifies everything.
You might use log analysis tools like those available at https://papertrailapp.com/log-analyzer/ to help you identify what goes where. Solutions like this help you analyze and organize data, and can simplify interacting with it so you can get the most done with the least complication. Especially for apps that are popular, and have consistently expanding traffic, it’s important to stay ahead of the bugs in as near real-time as possible.
- Don’t Forget The Timeline
It’s important to ensure you’ve got a timeline of events attached to everything. Each instance of logging should have a time-stamp, and analytic software which can organize varying exceptions by the time they occurred. This way you can find if there are errors in diverse areas which may be correlated.
Maximum Application Optimization
Keep a timeline pertaining to errors so you can see when issues occur. Organize everything in a centralized way using data analysis, cloud, and other applicable solutions to ensure the right people have access to the right information when they need it.
Lastly, ensure you log everything you possibly can. By organizing data centrally, and applying varying timeline or analysis apps to it, you can identify errors quicker, and maintain your application more efficiently.
Talha Ali is your tech generalist, covering a wide spectrum of topics within the ever-evolving world of technology. With a curiosity for the latest innovations, industry trends, and breakthroughs. Whether it’s hardware, software, emerging technologies, or the intersection of tech with daily life, Talha’s articles provide readers with a well-rounded perspective on the dynamic landscape of the tech industry.
