Using the Consolidated Tracing Facility

The Consolidated Tracing Facility (CTF) is a tracing infrastructure that enables you to quickly and easily produce diagnostic information detailing the operation of Micro Focus software components. The only component currently enabled to provide information using the Consolidated Tracing Facility is the run-time system.

To use the Consolidated Tracing Facility you perform the following steps:

  1. Edit a side file to enable tracing and define the tracing information you want to capture. You use the entries in the side file to specify information such as the applications you want to trace, the severity level of tracing messages you want to see, and details of the text file that the trace information is written to.
  2. Run the applications. The Consolidated Tracing Facility uses a module called an emitter to output all the relevant information. The only emitter currently available writes the information to a text file.
  3. Examine the results. The completeness of the information written to the trace file provides you with all the relevant diagnostic information to help you troubleshoot problems.