Features & Benefits

SmartInspect offers many benefits to developers, testers and support engineers. See below for a selection of the main benefits and features.

Architecture

SmartInspect has been designed to be as flexible as possible while still mainaining a very high performance. SmartInspect comes with various logging protocols, options and tools. The following sections illustrate just some of the possible logging configurations.

Log Files

SmartInspect supports three configurable log file formats for every need. The rich binary log file format can be analyzed with our powerful SmartInspect Console. The text file protocol on the other hand allows end-users to open log files and identify configuration problems with your application. The third option, strongly encrypted log files, are perfect for protecting your sensitive and proprietary information.

• Rich binary log files for analysis with the SmartInspect Console
• Text log files for inspection by end-users
• Strongly encrypted log files to project your data
• Flexible log file rotation for production systems
• Tens of thousands of log entries per second

Live Logging

To monitor an application in real-time, either locally or over the the network, SmartInspect offers high-performance named-pipes and TCP/IP logging protocols. Using these protocols together with the SmartInspect Console allows you to monitor and analyse production and development systems while they are running.

• Monitor applications in real-time with the SmartInspect Console
• High-performance named pipe protocol for local live logging
• TCP/IP protocol to monitor applications over a network
• Highly flexible with synchronous and asynchronous logging options
• Monitor production systems live without restarting them

SmartInspect Router

The SmartInspect Router service application is ideal for debugging and monitoring complex production systems. It can receive logging data via TCP/IP and named pipes from multiple applications and machines and write it to log files. Because the SmartInspect Router can be configured with custom rules, it is possible to merge logging data from different processes or machines to a single log file.

• Receives logging data via TCP/IP and named pipes
• High-performance log server for demanding production systems
• Flexible rule-based logging to log files and other protocols
• Support for logging from multiple processes to the same log file
• Can be deployed to customers and production systems royalty-free

Logging Libraries

SmartInspect ships with three logging libraries for .NET, Java and Delphi. All three libraries share the same core set of features and come with additional unique features for their particular platform. The libraries have been implemented in their respective target programming language and the full source code of the libraries is available for inspection and customization. Please see below for the main featueres of the SmartInspect logging libraries.

Libraries	Status
.NET Library
Java Library
Delphi Library

Protocols	Status
Rich Binary Log Files
Text Log Files
Encrypted Log Files
Named Pipes Protocol
TCP/IP Network Protocol
Memory Protocol
Custom Protocols (database, email..)

Protocol Options	Status
Rich Binary Log Files
Text Log Files
Encrypted Log Files
Named Pipes Protocol
TCP/IP Network Protocol
Memory Protocol
Custom Protocols (database, email..)

Data Logging	Status
Rich Binary Log Files
Text Log Files
Encrypted Log Files
Named Pipes Protocol
TCP/IP Network Protocol
Memory Protocol
Custom Protocols (database, email..)

Advanced Features	Status
Rich Binary Log Files
Text Log Files
Encrypted Log Files
Named Pipes Protocol
TCP/IP Network Protocol
Memory Protocol
Custom Protocols (database, email..)

SmartInspect ships with three logging libraries for .NET, Java and Delphi. All three libraries share the same core set of features and come with additional unique features for their particular platform. The libraries have been implemented in their respective target programming language and the full source code of the libraries is available for inspection and customization. Please see below for the main featueres of the SmartInspect logging libraries.

Viewer Console

Additional Tools

Libraries for .NET, Java and Delphi

SmartInspect comes with three native high-performance libraries for .NET, Delphi and Java. All libraries share the same core set of features and contain additional functionality for the particular development environment. See below for some of the features of the SmartInspect libraries.

• Logging support for many types and classes
• Log messages, errors, objects, files and more
• Support for TCP/IP and log files
• Full Unicode support in all three libraries
• Configurable via configuration files at runtime
• Supports advanced options like log rotation
• Simple text and rich binary log files available
• Log to memory or use a smart log queue
• Full library source code included
• Extensive online manual and documentation
• Integration with popular IDEs and editors
• Highly extendible and customizable
• Open log formats and protocols

Rich Viewer Application

The SmartInspect Console is the powerful and flexible application for viewing and analyzing logs. The Console is capable of loading the logging information from a log file or receiving it directly via TCP/IP. With the Console you can conveniently view, filter, search and even edit logs. Moreover it supports variable watches, displays all processes and threads of your applications and provides advanced viewers for all kinds of data.

• Debug and monitor software applications in real-time
• Opening of log files created by the SmartInspect libraries
• Provides advanced viewers for all kinds of data
• Support for call stacks and detailed log information
• Useful navigation features for browsing log files
• Powerful search functionality for finding log entries
• Watch variable values and track resources
• Printing and exporting of log files
• Flexible filter system and extensive customization options
• Modern and Unicode enabled user interface
• Organize views, categories and AutoView rules in projects

Production Systems

We tuned and optimized SmartInspect for performance so that you can use it on production systems. If SmartInspect is disabled, you will not notice any differences in speed versus an application without SmartInspect. Even if SmartInspect is enabled and you log a lot of information, the performance difference is minimal. We tested SmartInspect with hundreds of thousands of log entries so SmartInspect can handle even very big systems with ease.

Stability and reliability are other important factors when using a library on production systems. We tested SmartInspect carefully on all supported and even on some unsupported platforms. We designed a special automated test case system which we regularly execute on all supported platforms with currently more than 5000 tests.

• Libraries are optimized for performance
• Stable and reliable even on production systems
• Enable or disable logging at runtime
• Redistributable Console for end-users
• Can be integrated with exception reporting mechanisms
• No external dependencies on other applications or libraries

Distributed Systems and Multi-Threaded Applications

SmartInspect makes it possible to debug and monitor distributed systems and multi-threaded applications with ease. Where regular debuggers have their problems, SmartInspect shines with an innovative and intuitive interface and a clear overview of all running threads and processes. With SmartInspect you can easily analyze processes and threads independently from each other, solve timing issues and threading problems and follow the general execution flow of your applications.

• See all threads and processes at a glance
• View log entries of a specific thread or process
• Automatically create views with AutoView Rules
• Categorize views for easy navigation

Team Collaboration

SmartInspect contains many team collaboration features to support software development teams. We know how important efficient communication between team members is. We designed SmartInspect with that in mind and added collaboration features to encourage good team communication and easy sharing of logging information:

• Forward logging information from one Console to another
• Send log files via emails directly out of the Console
• Export log files to the XML, HTML and CSV formats
• Comment log files to highlight important parts