Logging
Recording application events and errors to files or systems for debugging and auditing.
Also: log management
Definition
Application logging is the practice of recording events, messages, errors, and state changes during software execution to support debugging, monitoring, auditing, and performance analysis. Log levels (DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR, FATAL) indicate severity; structured logging in JSON format enables machine parsing and search. Centralized logging platforms like the ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) and Splunk aggregate logs from distributed systems. Log retention policies must balance operational needs with storage costs and privacy regulations.
Example
“When a payment fails, the application logs an ERROR with structured fields including timestamp, user ID (hashed), error code, and stack trace, enabling the on-call engineer to diagnose the issue within minutes using the logging platform.”
Synonyms
- application logging
- audit logging
- log recording
- event logging
Antonyms / Opposites
- silent failure
- no logging
Images
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Related Terms
- monitoring
- observability
- siem
- microservices