Addressees of Trace Messages

Traces require a deep understanding of the traced entity. That is why only the following groups are addressed:

• Support engineers

  A typical support engineer has understanding of how an application or technical component/subcomponent works and how it is implemented. The support engineer uses this know-how to distinguish at least the following two kinds of a problem:

  • Is it an already known problem (with a solution available)?

  • Is it a new problem never faced before?

  Normally, information about the program flow, combined with information about the current program status has to be enough to classify the problem. All this has to be combined with information about the software and if necessary, the hardware component versions and attributes. The version information is mostly provided in other tools and does not need to be included in traces again.

  In case of a new problem, its localization origin is the critical task, since it is related to the task of finding the responsible developer for fixing the problem.

• Java Developers

  Traces must help developers understand the program flow and context of an application without the effort of analyzing each single statement.