Logging levels - Logback - rule-of-thumb to assign log levels

Question

I\'m using logback in my current project.

It offers six levels of logging: TRACE DEBUG INFO WARN ERROR OFF

I\'m looking for a rule of thumb to det

Answer 1

My approach, i think coming more from an development than an operations point of view, is:

• Error means that the execution of some task could not be completed; an email couldn't be sent, a page couldn't be rendered, some data couldn't be stored to a database, something like that. Something has definitively gone wrong.
• Warning means that something unexpected happened, but that execution can continue, perhaps in a degraded mode; a configuration file was missing but defaults were used, a price was calculated as negative, so it was clamped to zero, etc. Something is not right, but it hasn't gone properly wrong yet - warnings are often a sign that there will be an error very soon.
• Info means that something normal but significant happened; the system started, the system stopped, the daily inventory update job ran, etc. There shouldn't be a continual torrent of these, otherwise there's just too much to read.
• Debug means that something normal and insignificant happened; a new user came to the site, a page was rendered, an order was taken, a price was updated. This is the stuff excluded from info because there would be too much of it.
• Trace is something i have never actually used.