I’m almost through with a decent logging implementation for a Web service running under Windows Sharepoint services. Here are some hard earned lessons:
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I could not use Global.asax for a sharepoint hosted web service. The Sharepoint web services Global.asax derives from stssoap and when I included the code in a C# script block, the code never got invoked.
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Also, the concept of an application is not useful in the case of web service - since a single web might be used to host multiple services. So, now, I’ve moved all the Log4Net initialization code to the ASMX code behind ctor. I’ve also got a SetContext() method that sets the user name, application (service) name. I’m also mulling about including the last few characters from the session key - for cases where the same user is logged on from multiple machines.
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I need to do some more fine tuning - like enabling the connection pooling for the log4net connection string.
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Another great lesson learned - and this is for all the times when you’ve got all the bits of log4net up and running and yet can’t seem to get the logs…Use the log4net Debug release with the DbgViewutility from sysinternals. Log4net fails silently on errors and just doesn’t give you a clue as to what happened. For all those times when something utterly silly like a typo in your config brings all your logging to a standstill, keep DbgView running side by side. If Log4net hits a problem, it’ll get logged in the dbgview console. :)
