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Why log?

The best example of logging is the flight data recorders on commercial airplanes. The two boxes contain log data. When Boeing rolls out a new airplane, it is well tested. Everything is fine. But, who knows what is going to happen in the air? When an airplane crashes, the government takes great effort to recover them, because they are extremely valuable.

Most people in IT industry come from desktop computing environment; you sit in front of a PC running a program. If anything is wrong, it beeps and you fix it. But in a three tier environment, no one watches the servers. Clustering environment makes things even more complicated. 

When it comes to reading log messages, you need a reader. Usually the raw log message is difficult for human reading.

SuperLogging is a full featured, complete logging system. You can dynamically reconfigure all its attributes, using a GUI tool, any time, anywhere in the network. All the attributes are synchronized within the clustering. It is optimized for performance. The trace panel is the built-in "reader". When you click on a line of log message, the source code will show up with the line in question highlighted.

Why do I need logging when I have a debugger?

Logging is important both in development and on production.

In development, debuggers may not always work, especially if your call chain spans over many different JVMs. Applications work well for single users, but may not work for multi-users. In multi-users environment, debugger may not work well.

On production, you can not use a debugger at all.

If you want to know what is happening, logging is a must. There are no alternatives.