IBM WebSphere: Deployment and Advanced Configuration

Problem Determination Tools

Power Tools

WAS Trace

The tracing facility in WAS could have been covered in our section on WAS logs. However, it is such an important tool that it deserves classification here with the other “Power Tools.” In fact, if you cannot find anything useful in the log files, tracing should be your next step. By enabling WAS trace and providing trace specifications targeted at specific components, you can get a detailed narrative on exactly what WAS is doing each step of the way while processing transactions. WAS trace has two key features that make it a bit unusual but also extremely powerful. First, trace messages can be written to a circular in-memory buffer rather than to a file. This conserves disk space and performs ...