I think this is a great idea. Say goodbye to the days of running 'tail -f'
in two different xterms :)
> It could be useful to indicate the variety of log file types. I assume that
> HTPP logs will be the favorite. [Example: I spend my time grepping the VSMS
> server logs to see what percentage of JUMBO2 downloads break - by using the
> byte count. ] Are you anticipating the elementTypes will be as detailed as
> <ByteCount> or more general like <Transaction>? [I assume the latter, with
> additional means of qualification through attributes.]
Apache uses a sprintf-like format specification language, where the log
format may be arbitrarily specified. The server is then responsible for
parsing the format string and spitting out the appropriate logstuff. I
think that the stuff one finds in logfiles is common across many different
types of logfiles, so I would prefer specific over generic element names.
Besides, these things can take up a lot of space. Do we really want to do
<DATE TIMEZONE="GMT" MONTH="07" DAY="09" YEAR="1998" DAY="Thu" HOUR=...>
When we could (and probably should) do:
<DATE>Thu Jul 9 12:13:13 EDT 1998</DATE>
or its equivalent? I can see the desire to genericize logfile entries
getting ugly quick :)
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