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qflog
qflog
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Description

qflog is a tool for displaying log messages which is built on top of our Java library qflib. It can be used to conveniently browse log messages, searching for those that may be of relevance to some problem. Messages can be sorted, various kinds of filters can be applied and there is support for incremental search and bookmarks.

Additionally qflog provides a graphical interface for the parameters that control the generation of log messages. To that end qflog can either communicate with a program over RMI, or the component for display and control of the messages can be integrated directly into a program.

More information about qflog is available in the manual. You can grab the current version of qflog from our download page.

License

qflog is distributed for free under the terms of the Mozilla Public License Version 1.1, MPL for short. It comes without warranty of any kind. The license grants you free use of qflog, access to the source and the right to modify and redistribute it.

The only restrictions are that you cannot remove Quality First Software's copyright and that modifications of qflog are automatically covered by the MPL as well. Code that just uses qflog through its published interface (referred to as "greater work" in the license) is free to use any license whatever.

As long as these conditions are met there is nothing to inhibit commercial use or commercial distribution of qflog, e.g. together with other software on a CD-rom.

We decided in favor of the MPL because it appears to be a good compromise between protecting openness and free use on the one hand and enabling interoperation with third party software under any license on the other. The text of the license is short and precise compared to others and is comprehensible for the layman.

Requirements

qflog comes in two flavours, one for JDK 1.1 with Swing 1.1 and one for JDK 1.2 and above. Both versions are essentially the same, the only difference being the location of the collection classes.

The collection framework is a part of the Java Foundation Classes (JFC). With the release of JDK 1.2 the JFC were integrated into the standard Java class library.

Since the collection classes are far superior to their predecessors Vector and Hashtable, use of them is widespread throughout qflog. SUN has released a JDK 1.1 compatible version of the collection classes under http://java.sun.com/beans/infobus/#DOWNLOAD_COLLECTIONS. To use qflog with JDK 1.1, the collections.jar archive from the above release must be present on your CLASSPATH.

qflog is built on top of our free Java library qflib. Please get the current version from our download page.

Installation

Simply ensure that the correct qflog and qflib jar archives for your environment are present on your CLASSPATH, i.e. qflog_11.jar and qflib_11.jar for JDK 1.1 or qflog_12.jar and qflib_12.jar for JDK 1.2 and above. In the case of JDK 1.2 it is also possible to simply copy qflog_12.jar and qflib_12.jar into the jre/lib/ext directory of your JDK installation.

You'll find a start script in the bin directory of the qflog distribution (qflog for Unix or qflog.bat for Windows), which you should copy to a directory on your PATH.

To test the installation execute
qflog -version
This should print a short message stating the installed qflog version.

Feedback

Every kind of feedback is welcome. Please send comments, bug reports, patches, feature requests etc. to qflog@qfs.de.

History
7/10/2000

Skipping 0.96.0 for compatibility with qflib versioning, this release removes all RMI-dependent stuff from the de.qfs.apps.qflog.logview package. In the future other protocols may be implemented for better Applet and non Java support.

New features:

  • New menu entry in log window to remove visible rows from the table.
  • Uses FocusFixer to work around a JDK 1.1/motif bug.
  • The test client has a new option -configfile <file> to designate a file for saving and loading the configuration.

Bugs fixed:

  • When restoring the LogLevel configuration, the value for the queue size was overwritten by the pre queue level.
  • The message counter in the status line is fixed. Removing all entries caused even the total count to reset to zero and it didn't update when new messages arrived but were invisible due to the filter settings.
5/22/2000

The English manual is included with version 0.95.1. A new chapter has been added and printable PDF versions are also available. Start scripts for the demo application testclient have been included in the bin directory.

5/5/2000

Version 0.95.0 is the first public release.

Todo
We know of the following bugs in the current version:
  • No known bugs
Future plans:
  • Online help
  • Search functionality for the trees
  • More information in the status bar
  • More log file formats
  • Additional client/server Protocols, e.g. CORBA, sockets
  • Support for other languages, especially Python and C++

Last update: 07/10/2000, Copyright © 2000 Quality First Software, Gregor Schmid