Is logging to a message queue a good idea?

Question

Currently I'm facing the problem to aggregate several log files from a distributed system.

But since most of the applications are Java applications which use both log4j and all of them use JMS I thought about logging directly into a message queue instead of copying the individual log files.

Is this a good idea or can this backfire somehow?

Answer 1

A couple of loose ideas:

• performance was already mentioned — turning on detailed debug information may prove impossible in production environment (if it turns out you need to trace for a deeply hidden error),
• you lose log4j's roll-over behaviour, you have to implement it yourself at the point where you collect log statements,
• add process/machine specific info to log lines (unless it's obvious otherwise which application issued which log line),
• consider adding an incrementing counter of log lines in every application if you absolutely need to know the order in which log statements were issued — message delivery order is not guaranteed and time stamp in log4j is only at millisecond increments,
• efficient analysis of such bulky file may require good (and paid, or even custom-written) log viewers.