The Open Text Content Server (formerly the Livelink Enterprise Server) can produce a great deal of transactional information, much of which includes performance data, but only one type of file is really suitable for modeling the performance of running system. Most of the log files are intended to assist developers and support personnel in diagnosing and troubleshooting transactional issues. The overhead placed on the system by these logs can be quite significant as the details being written increases. While it will vary greatly, "connect logs", the most detailed of the logging formats, can decrease performance by as much as 30%.

There is a lesser-known logging format for the Content Server called the Summary Timings logs which is not exposed via the administration GUI that is the most suitable format for performance statistics. It is enabled via direct manipulation of the opentext.ini file

[options]

wantsummarytimings=TRUE

which creates a Comma Separated Value (csv) file where each transaction on the system is summarized into a single record. The available information in this file has grown over the various versions, but the basic premise of the file is the same, provide a light-weight approach to transactional logging so that transactional forensic analysis and system trend analysis can be performed with minimal performance impact. The system uses buffering to minimize the impact of writing this data to disks and sets maximize sizes of files that will be automatically rolled over when reached to ensure the individual files do not place a significant burden on the system.

The data provided can be quite rich and a great deal of data mining is possible using just these files. We highly recommend that every Content Server-based system ensure that Summary Timings files are being generated on all production servers at all times.