A Survey of Software Log Instrumentation

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.

Development of Secured Log Management System Over Blockchain Technology

A log is a record of events that happens within an organization containing systems and networks. These logs are very important for any organization, because a log file will able to record all user activities. Due to this, log files play a vital role and contain sensitive information, and therefore security should be a high priority. It is very important to the proper functioning of any organization, to securely maintain log records over an extended period of time. So, management and maintenance of logs is a very difficult task. However, deploying such a system for high security and privacy of log records may be overhead for an organization and require additional costs. Many techniques have been designed for security of log records. The alternative solution for maintaining log records is using Blockchain technology. A blockchain will provide security of the log files. Log files over a Blockchain environment leads to challenges with a decentralized storage of log files. This article proposes a secured log management over Blockchain and the use of cryptographic algorithms for dealing the issues to access a data storage. This proposed technology may be one complete solution to the secure log management problem.