In today's fast-paced technological landscape, ensuring that applications run smoothly and efficiently is crucial. Various tools help in monitoring, logging, and automating processes to maintain high performance and reliability. In this blog, we will explore key application support tools, including alternatives to widely used ones, to give you a broader perspective on maintaining and troubleshooting your applications.
Log4j
Log4j is a powerful logging framework that can be very effective for troubleshooting applications. By generating detailed log messages, Log4j helps developers understand what an application is doing at any point in time, diagnose issues, and trace the flow of execution.
Realtime Example of Log4j
Imagine I am developing a web application that handles user registrations and logins.
I want to use Log4j to log various activities and errors in real time to help troubleshoot issues and monitor application behavior.
Example -
2024-05-24 12:34:00 - Application started
2024-05-24 12:34:56 - Registering user with email
2024-05-24 12:35:02 - User registration successful
Alternative Tool for Log4j
Logback is a popular logging framework for Java applications that serves as a powerful alternative to Log4j. It was created by the same developer who created Log4j and is considered an improved version in terms of performance and features.
Two Real Time Example for Logback -
E-commerce Web Application Logging An e-commerce web application logs user activities and errors using Logback.
2024-05-24 15:30:45 - E-commerce application started
2024-05-24 15:30:45 - Processing order
2024-05-24 15:30:45 - Error processing order
Banking Application Logging Scenario
A banking application logs user activities and transactions using Logback.
2024-05-24 12:05:00 - Banking application started
2024-05-24 12:05:01 - Performing transaction for user
2024-05-24 12:05:02 - Transaction of amount $1000 performed successfully
Benefits of using Log4j
Using Log4j in a real-time application allows developers to capture and record essential information about the application's execution, user activities, and errors.
This information is crucial for troubleshooting, monitoring, and maintaining the application, ensuring it runs smoothly and issues are addressed promptly.
ITRS
ITRS (Integrated Trading and Risk Systems) is a software tool used for real-time monitoring and managing IT systems and applications. The main product, ITRS Geneos, helps ensure that critical systems are running smoothly and any issues are quickly detected and fixed.
Realtime Example of ITRS
Suppose a Telematics Company uses ITRS Geneos to monitor servers and network infrastructure that process vehicle data. If a server or network device has an issue, Geneos alerts the IT team immediately so they can fix it.
Alternative Tool for ITRS
Google Cloud Monitoring, formerly known as Stack driver, is a comprehensive monitoring, logging, and diagnostics solution provided by Google Cloud Platform (GCP). It offers a wide range of features to help you monitor the health and performance of your applications and infrastructure running on GCP.
Two Real Time Example for GCP
Monitoring: Make sure that the CPU doesn't work too hard, so it stays fast and responsive. If it's always busy, we might need more resources or make things simpler.
Alerts: Set up messages to let you know if the CPU, memory, or other important parts of the computer get too busy. This helps us fix problems quickly before they cause bigger issues.
Benefits of using ITRS
ITRS Geneos quickly tells you if something's wrong.
It offers dashboards that you can personalize, grows as your business grows.
Easily integrates with other software, making sure everything runs smoothly.
Autosys
AutoSys is a job scheduling tool used in IT to automate and manage tasks on different systems. It helps ensure these tasks run at the correct times, in the correct order, and under the right conditions.
Realtime Example of Autosys
An e-commerce company wants to perform several data processing tasks every night to prepare sales reports for the next day.
Task- 1: Extracting sales data from the database. Create a new job in Autosys and attach that job with script that extracts sales data from the database and set/schedule the job to run at 11 PM.
Task-2: Processing the data to generate reports. Create a new job that runs script to process the extracted data and generate reports and schedule that to run after Task-1 is completed successfully.
Task-3: Sending email to the sales team. Create a new job that runs the script to send email notifications to the sales team with reports and set it to run after Task-2 is completed successfully.
Alternative Tool for Autosys
Apache Airflow is an open-source platform for coordinating and managing a series of complicated tasks and data processing pipelines. It was originally developed by Airbnb and later open-sourced and contributed to the Apache Software Foundation.
Two Real Time Example for Apache Airflow
ETL (Extract, Transform, Load): It grabs information from different places, changes it to fit a certain format, and then puts it all together in a big storage area where it's easy to analyze.
DevOps Automation: Think of this as a robot helper for software teams. It takes care of setting up the workspace, making sure everything is in the right place, and moving the finished product along smoothly from development to deployment.
Benefits of using Autosys
Automation: Automates tasks, saving time and effort.
Scheduling: Sets tasks to run at specific times.
Dependency Management: Ensures tasks run in the correct order.
Centralized Control and Error Handling: Provides a single control panel for managing tasks and handles errors gracefully.
Two Real Time Example for Apache Airflow
Two Real Time Example for GCP
Alternative Tool for Log4j
Realtime Example of Log4j
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