Logging and Systems Management in Microsoft .NET Framework Application Development Foundation

11/12/2008

Contents

Case Scenarios

In the following case scenarios, you apply what you’ve learned about how to log application data and manage computer systems. You can find answers to these questions in the “Answers” section at the end of this book.

Case Scenario 1: Improving the Manageability of an Application

You are an application developer for the Graphic Design Institute. For the last year, you and your team have been managing the first version of an internal application named Orders. You are now identifying requirements for the second version of the application. Your manager asks you to interview key people and then answer questions about your design choices.

Interviews

The following is a list of company personnel interviewed and their statements.

IT Manager “Orders v1 usually worked great. However, it was difficult to manage. Sometimes, users would complain about poor performance, and we had no way to isolate the source of the problem. Also, it would have been helpful to identify degrading performance proactively so we could take measures to prevent it from being worse. Also, we have a new event management system, and we need user logon and logoff events in the event log that we can collect for security purposes.”
Development Manager “Occasionally, IT discovers what they think is a bug in the application. Unfortunately, the only way to isolate the problem is to have them document how to re-create it and then have one of my developers attempt to re-create the problem with a debugger running. It would be much more useful if we could enable a troubleshooting mode in the application to have it create a log file while running on the end-user computer. Then, we could analyze the log file and attempt to isolate the problem.”

Questions

Answer the following questions for your manager:

How can you meet the requirements outlined by the IT manager?
How can you meet the requirements outlined by the development manager?

Case Scenario 2: Collecting Information About Computers

You are an application developer working for Trey Research. Recently, an employee took confidential data out of the organization on a USB flash drive. Now, the IT department is requesting custom development to help them assess the storage currently attached to their computers and new storage devices that employees might attach.

The IT manager provides you with the following requests:

Storage inventory Create a tool that IT can distribute to every computer. The tool should generate a list of all disks attached to the computer.
Storage change notification Create an application that runs in the background when users log on. If a user connects a new disk, including a USB flash drive, it should display a warning message that the user should not remove confidential documents from the network. Then it should log the device connection.