Question

This is intended to be a lightweight generic solution, although the problem is currently with a IIS CGI application that needs to log the timeline of events (second resolution) for troubleshooting a situation where a later request ends up in the MySQL database BEFORE the earlier request!

So it boils down to a logging debug statements in a single text file.

I could write a service that manages a queue as suggested in this thread: Issue writing to single file in Web service in .NET but deploying the service on each machine is a pain

or I could use a global mutex, but this would require each instance to open and close the file for each write

or I could use a database which would handle this for me, but it doesnt make sense to use a database like MySQL to try to trouble shoot a timeline issue with itself. SQLite is another possability, but this thread

http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=672403

Suggests that it is not a good choice either.

I am really looking for a simple approach, something as blunt as writing to individual files for each process and consolidating them accasionally with a scheduled app. I do not want to over engineer this, nor spend a week implementing it. It is only needed occassionally.

Suggestions?

Answer 1

Try the simplest solution first – each write to the log opens and closes the file. If you experience problems with this, which you probably won’t , look for another solution.