This page describes Logging and the Recycle Bin in Perfion. It will explain how to enable logging, show and explain the logging- and recycle bin user interface, how to restore deleted items and how to enable logging of binaries.

Logging and Recycle Bin was introduced in Perfion 4.5 2018 R3.

The Purpose of Logging

Logging is used to keep track of all update- and delete-operations carried out on items, specs and (optionally) binaries in Perfion.

With logging enabled, two functionalities will be available:

• The Recycle Bin, in which deleted items can be found and restored.

• A ‘Previous values’-dialog that can be invoked on any feature on an item in the gridview. This dialog allows users to find and restore old values on the feature for the specific item.

Enabling Logging

Logging is per default not enabled in Perfion. This has to be done by a user who is a member of the ‘Administration’-group.

Logging-settings are found in the ‘Settings’-window, which can be accessed from the ‘Administration’-tab.

Open

To enable logging, press the ‘Enable’-button in the ‘Log’ section. To disable logging again, press the ‘Disable’-button. Enabling logging will cause a dialog to appear with the following message:

‘Enabling logging might have a negative effect on the performance of Perfion. If this happens you can always disable it again in this dialog. Continue?’ – Press ‘Yes’ to enable logging.

Include binary data in logging

When logging has been enabled, it is also possible to include binaries in the log. This is done by checking the ‘Include binaries’-checkbox. Checking this box, will cause a dialog to appear with the following message:

‘This will include logging of Binary Data (images and files). This can have a negative effect on the performance and make the database grow significantly in size. If this happens you can always disable it again in this dialog. Continue?’ – Press ‘Yes’ to include logging of binary data.

What is logged in the Log?

All data which have been updated, deleted or restored will be logged and can be viewed in the Log. Current values will not be reflected in the Log.

Examining the Log Viewer Window

The ‘Log Viewer’-window can be accessed from the ‘Administration’-tab.

Open

Pressing the ‘Log Viewer’-option will open the ‘Log Viewer’-window, which consists of two tabs; ‘View and ‘Maintenance’.

The View Tab

The default View Tab consists of two areas; the filters (red square) and the log itself (green square). The View tab is used to search the log and to restore values and items.

The search criteria’s area (red square) is divided into three sections; Items, Values and Logged. The options in these three areas can be used to specify filters for searching the log.

• Item IDs: This text-field is used to specify which Item IDs should be shown in the log. Multiple Items IDs can be provided to search for multiple items simultaneously, separating each ID with a ‘,’ or hitting the return-button on the keyboard.

• Log Kind: This box is used to specify which operation to search for in the log. The following options are available:

  • Update: Finds all ‘update’-operations.

  • Delete: Finds all ‘delete’-operations.

  • Restore: Finds all ‘restore’-operations.

• Feature Names/IDs: This text-field is used to search for specific features – by ID or name. Multiple Feature Names/IDs can be provided to search for multiple items simultaneously, separating each ID with a ‘,’ or hitting the return-button on the keyboard.

• By: Used to search for operations executed by a specific user.

• From: Used to pick the date, from which point in time the log should be shown from.

• To: Used to pick the date, from which point in time the log should be shown to.

When doing a search in the log, it is not necessary to fill out every filter. All filters mentioned above can be mixed-and-matched as desired by the user. 

It is also possible to use the ‘Search’-button without applying any filters. This will show everything in the log. The ‘Clear’-button removes all applied filters.

The Log area (green square) will display the entries in the log which matches the applied filters.

The Maintenance Tab

In the second tab in the Log, Maintenance, it is possible to delete log entries and clear the log completely. This is important to do on a regular basis, because the Log can grow huge, which will affect the performance of Perfion. How often depends on how frequently data is changed in the specific installation.

There are two buttons in the Maintenance-tab:

• Delete log entries older than: Use this option to delete entries in the log that are older than the number of days specified in the box.

• Clear log: Use this option to delete all entries from the log.

Understanding the Log’s Data

To give a better understanding of the data displayed in the log, the following section will contain examples of log data and how to understand the represented data.

(The following examples uses the Coffee Demo Database. Some modifications of items and feature-values have been made in advance to fill data into the log. See the section ‘What is logged in the Log?’ to see, which operations are logged.)

Example 1 – Searching without applying filters

Pressing the ‘Search’-button without having applied any filters will result in the whole being displayed. Doing this to a slightly modified database could result in the following data:

The Log list, on the left side, contains several rows. Each row on this level corresponds to an Item or an Action. Items that are currently in the database are marked with an icon containing a green plus. Items that are deleted from the database are marked with an icon containing a red cross.

A row with a green plus can be one of two Log Kinds: An Update or a Restore.

Log Kind - Update

Updating one of an item’s feature values will result in an update operation logged in the log. See the following example:

Expanding the row, will show all modifications made to the specific item ‘TE717209RW’ with a base-feature of ‘Product’.

Reading from top-to-bottom, the rows can be read as:

• ‘Subheader’ feature-value ‘Smart and practical’ was deleted. The deletion happened to the language ‘EN’ by the user ‘Admin’. The deletion was made on the ‘2023-04-18 13:28:15’.

• ‘Image’ feature-value was changed from ‘TI907201RW’. The change was made on the ’2023-04-18 10:14:53’.

• ‘Image’ feature-value was changed from ‘TE717209RW’. The change was made on the ’2023-04-18 10:14:37’.

• ‘Color’ feature-value was changed from ‘Black’. The deletion was made by the user ‘Admin’ on the ‘2023-04-18 10:12:14’.

Log Kind – Restore

Please see section ‘Recycle Bin’ for more information about ‘Restore’.

Log Kind – Delete

A row with a red cross is a Log Kind of Delete.

A row with the Log Kind of Delete is logged every time an item is deleted. Deleted items are deleted from the database, but can still be found in the Log, because it is located in the Recycle Bin. When deleting an item, all the item’s feature-values are also deleted. Expanding the item ‘CM192846’ with a base-feature of ‘Product’ will look like this:

The item was deleted and multiple changes happened during the deletion. All the rows below are the feature-values of the item, which were also deleted in the process.

Example 2 – Searching by applying filter

Applying filters will ease the search of databases with huge logs. It is possible to apply multiple filters in the same search, to find specific entries.

It is also possible to provide multiple Item IDs and Feature Names/IDs, to search for multiple entries in the log at the same time. As shown in this example, it is very powerful to combine multiple filters with multiple parameters to narrow down the result of the log.

The Recycle Bin

Once the log has been enabled, it is possible to access the Recycle Bin. The Recycle Bin can be used to view deleted items and restore them as well.

The Recycle Bin can be accessed by right-clicking in any gridview and choosing ‘Recycle Bin’.

The items shown in the Recycle Bin will be dependent on the base-feature of the specific gridview. E.g. Showing the Recycle Bin for a gridview where the base-feature is ‘Product’ will only show all deleted items whose base-feature is of type ‘Product’.

The Recycle Bin window looks similar to the Log, except it is not possible to apply filters in the Recycle Bin.

The Recycle Bin will display the base-feature above the list of deleted items. Expanding the deleted item, will reveal several rows, each representing the feature and its feature value, which were also deleted with the item.

Restoring Items

From the Recycle Bin, it is possible to restore deleted items. This is done by right-clicking on an item and choosing ‘Restore item’ in the context-menu.

Restoring an item will removed it from the Recycle Bin. The restored item will then become visible in the Log instead, where it is displayed as an entry with the Log Kind of Restore.

Previous Values

While it is possible to restore whole items, it is also possible to restore feature-values. This is done in the ‘Previous values’ window. It can be accessed by right-clicking on the specific item’s feature and choosing ‘Previous values…’

Example - Restoring Previous Values

The Previous values window will be limited only to the specific item’s feature on which the right-click was performed on. The item will be displayed above the list. In this example, the Previous values window shows previous values for the item ‘TE717209RW’. The specific feature (Subheader) can be seen as the column name of the first column.

The list contains two entries;

• ‘New text’ - displayed with an eraser-icon: This was the most recent previous value. When represented with an eraser-icon, the value ‘New text’ was deleted (leaving the current value empty).

• ‘A technological marvel’ - displayed with a pencil-icon: This value was modified from ‘A technological marvel’ to something else (in this example, it was modified from ‘A technological marvel’ to ‘New text’, which we can tell by looking at the entry above).

It is possible to restore either of these previous values by right-clicking on the value and choosing ‘Restore value’. This will bring up a dialog-box, ‘Restore completed’, and after pressing the OK-button, the value is restored which will be reflected in the gridview immediately.