|
:: Paul Bunyan API and Technical Info ::
Paul Bunyan's robust composite message logging API is accessible
through a C/C++ API, a command line executable, and an in-process COM
server. Messages may be logged from batch files or shell scripts, and
from numerous programming languages (e.g., Assembly, C, C++, Pascal,
Java, Visual Basic, VB Script, and ASP) as well as from applications
that support automation or macro languages (e.g., InstallShield,
Microsoft Access, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft Word).
Additional API extensions are also made available as freeware prior to
formal inclusion with Paul Bunyan. Current extensions support SQL
Server, Sybase, InstallShield, and more.
The various interfaces/APIs are all 100% threadsafe and designed to
interact safely and productively in any mixed or matched fashion. The
capabilities of Paul Bunyan's composite API become readily apparent in
multi-component applications where transactions can be visually and
seamlessly tracked across object, product, language, and even machine
boundaries, instead of by inference, trial and error, or the
time-consuming debugging of numerous opaque code modules.
Paul Bunyan is an extremely robust and feature-rich message logging
system. It is built on a full client/server architecture consisting of
a viewer, a message server, and an Application Programming Interface
(API).
The viewer is Paul Bunyan's front end desktop application which is used
to download and display log messages to the user. It is a highly
feature-rich application supporting concurrent multi-server TCP/IP
connections, flexible multi-query display capabilities, and more.
The message server executes as a background process and manages five
tasks:
- Receiving incoming log messages created by
locally resident
applications via the API
- Downloading log messages to connected
viewers.
- Routing log messages to message handlers.
- Forwarding log
messages to and from other message servers.
- Managing a persistent
FIFO queue of log messages so that any subsequently connecting viewers
or servers can download/forward messages that have come in since the
time of last connection – analogous to standard functionality in
similar client/server based message distribution systems such as
Internet news or email.
The API allows software applications to programmatically create and
transmit status and error log messages to the (locally resident)
message server.
Connectivity
All viewer-to-server and server-to-server connectivity and communication uses TCP/IP sockets. The foremost benefit of this is that Paul Bunyan can be utilized in fully distributed fashion over any TCP/IP network -- including the Internet. Where the more network-restrictive D/COM protocol is used for message server to message handler communications, server-to-server forwarding can be used to completely eliminate the need for cross-machine, inter-network D/COM connectivity.
Resource Impact
Paul Bunyan was designed with the most demanding of environments in mind. It is tuned for absolute minimal resource impact using advanced technologies such as in-memory data compression. It is likewise tuned for minimal CPU usage and can be fully utilized in even the most mission critical applications with virtually zero impact (50K+ messages/sec) on performance. Paul Bunyan is completely scalable, supports fully distributed operation, and allows complete control over resource usage.
Editions Lite Edition - Great for small projects!
The Lite Edition is a powerful and full-featured debugging and analysis tool that is affordably priced. It supports multiple programming languages, rich contextual information, flexible display capabilities, robust filtering, configurable resource usage, virtually zero performance impact, secure message handling, and multi-connection message download capability across any TCP/IP link including the Internet.
Professional Edition - Perfect for distributed systems!
The Professional Edition supports all Lite Edition features and adds functionality enabling the viewer to persist log messages to disk for historical analysis, and allows the message server to cache log messages across reboots for intermittent retrieval. It targets users who work more with persistent log messages (e.g., developers working with remote or distributed systems, QA personnel performing regression testing). The Professional Edition is perfect for use in production environments where a history of messages or transactions is needed.
Enterprise Edition - Designed for automated event handling!
The Enterprise Edition supports all features present in the Professional Edition and adds further functionality in forwarding log messages between message servers and routing log messages to custom-coded message handlers over D/COM. It is targeted at production systems with message routing requirements (e.g., network access or configuration management concerns) and those with requirements for programmatically processing log messages for event handling or notification. Message handlers operating in such environments may be used for restarting services, cleaning up system resources, paging or emailing support personnel, or raising events in other enterprise event handling systems such as Tivoli®, NetIQ®, RoboMon®, or Opalis®.
|
|
|
|
|