Understanding alerts

You can view the current Alert log or download the current Alert Log from the server to your workstation.

1. Select Tools > Log Files.
2. Click the file name link to view the Alert log. By default, only those lines of the log containing the name of your Operator ID appear. You can remove this filter or establish another filter.
3. Click the Text or ZIP link to download the Alert log as a text file or zip file. You may be prompted for application server authentication credentials, if defined for the PegaDiagnosticUser role in the web.xml file. Consult the Installation Guide for more information and instructions.
4. Import the file into Microsoft Excel, using a single asterisk character (*) as the field separator character, for ease in reading, sorting, or searching.

Process Commander includes thirty alert types. Threshold settings in the prconfig.xml file affect the operation and criteria of many alert types. For detailed information about every field reported by each alert type, consult the Alerts Guide 5.4, a PDF document available on the Pega Developer Network.

The Alert log may contain any of the following alert types; the category description appears on the My Alerts display.

ID	Category	Message text and description
PEGA0001	Browser Interaction	Browser interaction time has exceeded a threshold setting. See How to monitor interactive response times.
PEGA0002	DB Commit Time	Database commit operation has exceeded a threshold setting. See How to detect lengthy PegaRULES database operations.
PEGA0003	DB Rollback Time	Database rollback operation has exceeded a threshold setting. See How to detect lengthy PegaRULES database operations.
PEGA0004	DB Bytes Read	Number of bytes received from the database has exceeded threshold. See How to monitor Storage Stream operations.
PEGA0005	DB Time	Database query operation has exceeded an elapsed time threshold setting. See How to detect lengthy PegaRULES database operations.
PEGA0008	PRPC Started	PegaRULES engine successfully started.
PEGA0009	PRPC Failed Start	PegaRULES engine failed to initialize.
PEGA0010	Agent Disabled	Agent processing disabled because of execution errors
PEGA0011	Service Total Time	Services — One of five time thresholds was exceeded during a service execution See Testing Services and Connectors on the Integration page of the Pega Developer Network.
PEGA0016	Cache Reduced	The number of records in the rule assembly cache, a personal cache, or a property conclusion cache has reached or exceeded about 75% of the limit specified in the prconfig.xml file; This causes the system to invalidate older entries in the cache, making room for newer ones. See Understanding caching.
PEGA0017	Cache Force Reduced	The number of records in the rule assembly cache, a personal cache, or a property conclusion cache has reached or exceeded a limit specified in the prconfig.xml file. This causes the system to immediately invalidate older entries in the cache, making room for additions. See Understanding caching.
PEGA0018	PRThreads Limit	Number of PRThreads has exceeded the threshold for a requestor.
PEGA0019	Long Requestor	The master agent has detected a long-running requestor session. See How to detect long-running requestors.
PEGA0020	Connect Total Time	A connector call to an external system has exceeded an elapsed time threshold. See How to detect lengthy connector executions and Testing Services and Connectors, located on the Integration page of the Pega Developer Network.
PEGA0021	Declarative Page Memory	The total of shared memory to store Node-scope declarative pages has exceeded a threshold. See More about Declare Page rules.
PEGA0022	Rule Cache Disabled	The rules cache became disabled, typically by an administrator using the System Management Application.
PEGA0023	Rule Cache Enabled	The rules cache became enabled, typically accomplished by an administrator using the System Management application.
PEGA0024	Loading Declarative Network	Loading declarative network has exceeded an elapsed time threshold. See How to detect large declarative networks.
PEGA0025	Reading Blob Need Columns	A list operation (for example, an Obj-Browse method) accessed properties within the Storage Stream (blob) column, that is, properties not exposed as individual columns.
PEGA0026	Database Connection Time	The elapsed time taken to acquire a database connection exceeded a threshold. See How to detect long database connection waits.
PEGA0027	DB Rows Returned	A list operation returned many rows. See How to detect database list operations that return many rows.
PEGA0028	JVM Garbage Collection	Collection usage threshold exceeded for long-lived object memory pool. A garbage collection operation completed, but did not free sufficient virtual memory.
PEGA0029	HTML Stream Size	An HTML stream sent to the browser exceeds 2,000 kilobytes (or another threshold setting). See How to detect large HTML streams.
PEGA0030	Requestor Limit	The number of requestors on a system node exceeds 200 (or another threshold setting). See How to detect when the number of requestors exceeds the threshold.
PEGA0031	Stream Overwritten	A generated HTML stream was overwritten without being sent to the browser client. See How to detect when a generated stream was overwritten but never sent.
PEGA0032	Invalidated Rules	Rule change invalidated the specified threshold of entries in the Rule Assembly cache. See How to detect when a rule change invalidates many entries in the Rules Assembly cache.
PEGA0033	DB Query Length	Database query length has exceeded the specified threshold See How to detect when the database query length has exceeds a specified threshold.
PEGA0034	Declare Index	The number of declare indexes in a single interaction exceeded threshold. See How to detect when the number of declare indexes exceed a threshold.
PEGA0035	Clipboard List Size	A Page List property contains more than a specified threshold number of elements. See How to detect when a Page List property has many elements.

For additional information about each alert type, see Pega Developer Network article PRKB-25374 Performance Alerts, security alerts, and AES.

Four alerts appeared in V5.2 but do not appear in later versions:

Two alerts appeared in V5.3 but do not appear in later versions:

The PegaRULES Log Analyzer (PLA) is a Web application that can parse, consolidate and summarize alert logs.

For basic information on PLA, see PDN articles PRKB-25406 Understanding the PegaRULES Log Analyzer and PRKB-25392 How to use the PegaRULES Log Analyzer.

Fields in the Alert log are separated by an asterisk character. You can import the Alert log into Microsoft Excel for viewing, searching, sorting, or other analysis:

1. Start Excel 2000 or a later version of Excel.
2. Select File > Open from the Excel menus.
3. Navigate to the PEGA-ALERT-ZZZZLOG file and click Open. The Text Import Wizard starts.
4. Select the Delimited radio button in the Original data type group. Click Next.

5. Select the Other check box and type a single asterisk as the delimiter. Click Finish.

Access the Pega Developer Network to obtain the latest copy of the Alerts.XLS Excel template. This can speed and simplify parsing and summarizing Alert logs .

Each line of the log contains multiple fields, delimited by a single asterisk character. Each line contains these fields. The first column identifies the Excel column after import.

Security alerts are recorded in the Security log.

The Alert log identifies the names of activities and other rules executed. By default for alerts of types PEGA0002 to PEGA0007, parameter values and SQL statements containing property values also appear. You can include the suppressInserts keyword in the prconfig.xml file so that parameter values and other potentially sensitive data values are omitted in prepared statement inserts:

  1. Add the following line to the prconfig.xml file:

<env name="alerts/database/operationTimeThreshold/suppressInserts" value="true" />

  2. Stop and restart or redeploy the system.

An appender setting in the prlogging.xml file determines the name and existence of the Alert log.

The Alert log supports the optional Autonomic Event Services component, which summarizes and monitors alerts across multiple nodes in a cluster.

See also these Pega Developer Network articles:

• PRKB-25336 Understanding Alert Log message data
• PRKB-25374 Performance alerts, security alerts, and AES