Introducing Log Jump

What are log files?

Logging runtime information in an application can be useful for understanding the behavior of that app – especially in the inevitable cases where unexpected errors crop up or you just need to track certain application events.

Log file information can provide indicators of when and why bugs cause software failures; but they often don’t contain enough detailed information on their own, to identify and fix complex/intermittent bugs.

Limitations of log file analysis

Let’s imagine for a moment, that a software failure was a murder mystery book. We could think of log files as providing an indicative table of contents highlighting the chapters of the story.  LiveRecorder can be thought of as providing the actual detailed story content. You wouldn’t be able to figure out ‘whodunnit’ from the table of contents. You would need to read and understand the story itself. In a similar way, an engineer may wish to reference the log file output, but would want the full story detail to be able to find and fix the mystery bug. That’s what a LiveRecorder recording provides.

What is Log Jump?

When software errors occur, the number one question software engineers quickly need to get to grips with is, “what just happened & why?” Log Jump combines the indicative clues that logs provide, with the power of recordings, that capture all of the detailed information needed about a failure to determine a fix.

Log Jump provides a powerful method for developers to jump from a log line of interest to the corresponding point in time in a recording. This represents a significant acceleration of workflow that enables developers to leverage both log files and a LiveRecorder recording in order to quickly and efficiently understand application behavior, get indications of where the failure is occurring, zero in on the root cause and reverse debug quickly in order to resolve the problem.

Log jump represents an important leap forward in our commitment to providing engineers with powerful tools that will help them spend more time building great software and less time debugging it.

More technical information about Log Jump

To learn more about LiveRecorder and Log Jump and how it could benefit you, please contact your Undo account team.