This topic contains the following sections relating to the wwlog_api API package:

• Start-Stop logging
• Single-Step logging
• Viewing logged events

The event logging service may be used in either of two ways to log actions performed on database objects: Start-Stop logging and Single-Step logging.

Start-Stop event logging

You can use a combination of wwlog_api.start_log and wwlog_api.stop_log methods to have the logging service calculate the elapsed time of a logged item.

For example, to calculate the elapsed time of an action to be performed on a page in Oracle Portal, before beginning the call to draw the page, call wwlog_api.start_log:

  l_logid := wwlog_api.start_log

    (     
	 p_domain => 'Research&Development',
      p_subdomain => 'Expenses',
      p_name => '/SE_region/Incidental/Week1',
      p_action => 'view',
      p_information => 'Week1 included Memorial Day picnic',
      p_url => 'tools.rd_main.main?p_cornerid=772',
      p_deferred => true
     );

In this example, the page HTML has been generated and returned to the user. Inserting the log record into a table is deferred by the use of the p_deferred = true option. After calling wwlog_api.start_log, the methods that draw the page are called. After the page is drawn, the code calls wwlog_api.stop_log.

      wwlog_api.stop_log
      (
          p_id        => l_logid,
          p_row_count => 1,
          p_deferred  => true
       );

Note: The wwlog_api.stop_log command must use the same p_deferred value as the wwlog_api.start_log command.

Single-Step event logging

Use the wwlog_api.log command to create a log record by passing all of the attributes of the log to the procedure. This technique is useful for:

• Logging an event that has its own way to time the event.
  

• Logging an event for which elapsed time is meaningless.

For example, when logging an update to an item in Oracle Portal, the code passes the necessary values to the wwlog_api.log call:

    wwlog_api.log
    (
      p_domain    => 'sbr',
      p_subdomain => 'item',
      p_name      => '1/2332',
      p_action    => 'update',
      p_information => 'updated author',
      p_url       => '/docs/folderA/whitepaper.doc'
      p_row_count => 1,
      p_elapsed_time => 1
     );

All Oracle Portal logging routines use autonomous transactions to ensure that when an entry is saved to the transaction log, it does not modify or commit the current transaction.

Note: Autonomous transactions are methods that are called and executed independently from the main body of code.

The logging service also automatically switches between two Portal logging tables, wwlog_activity_log1$ and wwlog_activity_log2$, based on the log interval in days that is set in the global preference store for the system: Oracle.Portal.Logging.interval.

Viewing logged events

Each logged event has a corresponding record which may be retrieved with the wwlog_activity_logs view.

For details see Event Log Record.