A Survey of Software Log Instrumentation

Abstract

Log messages have been used widely in many software systems for a variety of purposes during software development and field operation. There are two phases in software logging: log instrumentation and log management. Log instrumentation refers to the practice that developers insert logging code into source code to record runtime information. Log management refers to the practice that operators collect the generated log messages and conduct data analysis techniques to provide valuable insights of runtime behavior. There are many open source and commercial log management tools available. However, their effectiveness highly depends on the quality of the instrumented logging code, as log messages generated by high-quality logging code can greatly ease the process of various log analysis tasks (e.g., monitoring, failure diagnosis, and auditing). Hence, in this article, we conducted a systematic survey on state-of-the-art research on log instrumentation by studying 69 papers between 1997 and 2019. In particular, we have focused on the challenges and proposed solutions used in the three steps of log instrumentation: (1) logging approach; (2) logging utility integration; and (3) logging code composition. This survey will be useful to DevOps practitioners and researchers who are interested in software logging.