> We are considering changing lx/ltrace output format from
Polygraph-specific
> to XML. XML is good because there are many third-party tools that can
> process XML files. Many believe that XML will be a dominant text-based
> format in the future (without becoming a "Cobol for 21 century").
In general this is a good suggestion, but as I understand, the valuable
info is in the _binary_ log file. Once you've decided what you want to
extract from this file, and then extract it with lx and ltrace, the
output format serves only for display and presentation purposes.
> On the other hand, most of those tools cannot do much without
Polygraph-
> specific knowledge about the files -- simply displaying collected
numbers
> without special formatting and annotation is not really useful. We
could
> provide Polygraph-specific converters, of course, but that partially
> defeats the primary advantage of using XML (third party support).
Custom
> format is more compact which may become an issue for ltrace output.
Both
> are what they call "ASCII" formats.
Can you elaborate more on "simply displaying collected numbers without
..."
I don't understand what needs special formatting and annotation that
cannot
be done by processing the _binary_ log file.
> We have also considered changing _binary_ log format to XML. However,
that
> change will probably either increase log sizes 3-5 times or will cause
> information loss. Binary log files are already quite large. However,
one
> could argue that compressing XML-fied binary logs might solve the size
> problem.
XML log files has a mush stronger added value for analysis, but making
these files so big is a nuisance. I would prefer an independent program
that will convert the _binary_ format to XML which I could use when in
need.
Ittai Gilat
Performance Group
Microsoft Haifa R&D
Office: +972-4-8561057
Mobile: +972-54-524707
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 12:00:18 MDT