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biztalketw

BizTalk instrumentation and ETW events payload

I am using the BizTalk Instrumentation Best Practices to add custom traces to the already available BizTalk components ETW providers. I also use the BizTalk CAT Instrumentation Framework Controller to manage my ETW traces and log them to an ETL binary file. Once traces are produce, the "tracefmt.exe" tool together with the "Default.tmf" event definition file provided with the framework help produce simple text files containing logs such as:

011BC.15A4::11:08:46.139 Event:TRACEIN: Microsoft(…).segment1("Orchestration start.") => 82ed2e95-130a-4f28-8fd8-e921b6ef9c40
11BC.15A4::11:08:46.139 [Event]:INFO: Some useful information logged here
11BC.15A4::11:08:46.139 [Event]:TRACEOUT: Microsoft(...).segment1("Orchestration end.") = <void> <= [82ed2e95-130a-4f28-8fd8-e921b6ef9c40]

This is all very useful, but it seems the amount of information actually stored in the ETW events is limited. I therefore have a few questions to push the usability of the logs and framework further:

  1. The logs and the generated text file contain (1) a timestamp and (2) the text of the message. Is there more information actually available in the logged ETW event? For example, is the event level integer (Info, Warning, Error, etc...) actually logged in the ETL or just the message?
  2. To follow-up on the previous question, is there a more complete "TMF" file that would expose the extra information store in the ETL with the ETW events?
  3. Is it possible to add information such as the ActivityId to the events logged to ETW through the framework?

Many thanks!

Solution

  • If you are interested, please have a look at the answer I have received on a MS BizTalk forum:

    http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/biztalkgeneral/thread/17c20386-c550-4412-93d7-930a1b9679c8

    Short conclusion: the CAT best practices can be useful for a quick solution to log through the built-in BizTalk Server ETW channels, but offers little in terms of customization.