I just had a customer ask me about having a more advanced level of logging then that the comes Out of the box (OOB) with SharePoint/MOSS 2007. I did a little bit of research and found a great (FREE) CodePlex project and wanted to make sure that the people who read this blog had a chance to evaluate it. According the "Releases" page the Release Candidate 1 dropped in March 2008!
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Here's the project description (taken from the site):
SharePoint Logging spy is a MOSS 2007 utility to allow real time diagnostics of multiple servers in a SharePoint farm using a single console view
SharePoint Logging Spy is a real time diagnostic application for MOSS 2007 which allows a SharePoint administrator to view (and save to disk) the ULS Log & Event log entries from multiple machines in a SharePoint farm through a single console. NOTE - There is a known issue with Event Log Entries not being displayed from remote machines. SharePoint Logging Spy also allows the administrator to view the historic ULS logs on the farm using the same interface.
SharePoint Logging Spy also has a treeview which allows a developer or administrator to view the state of the current SharePoint environment. The Plug-in architecture allows for extensibility of the core application.
The application also provides drill downs for information regarding the thread or process which generated the log entries which are reported in the main screen. The thread and process information is collected on demand (when you click the menu) and is NOT historical therefore it is feasible that the process/thread may no longer exist when you ask for the information and you will get an empty result set.
To easy configuration there is a discovery wizard which will discover on-line servers in the farm and allow selective monitoring to begin. There are plans to allow for the use of XML configuration files however this is yet to be implemented
When using the application always look out for tool tips or hit F1 on the controls to get some feedback about what they are used for. Right click on the controls to see if there is any functionality associated with them...
Here's the link to the download: Click here
~Robert Shelton
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