[TYPO3-v4] Minutes from the "36 chambers of TYPO3 Logging" workshop at T3DD11

[Steffen Müller]

Hi.

There was a workshop about TYPO3 Logging at the TYPO3 Developer Days on 
July, 9th 2011. About 20 participants worked together for half a day to 
discuss, learn and improve Logging in TYPO3.
The workshop was very successful and it turned out to be the kickoff for 
the first sub-project for TYPO3 version 4.7.

Workshop goals
--------------

 From the workshop abstract:
"TYPO3 has various kinds of logging features, whereas it's 
characteristics are determined by different factors: User roles, logging 
purpose, targets, APIs etc. The logging features in TYPO3 have grown 
over the years and seem to be scattered all over the core and various 
extensions. Therefore it is hard even for the experienced users to 
understand and keep track of it. The goal of the workshop is to analyze, 
understand and improve Logging in TYPO3."

Workshop participants
---------------------

This list is far from being complete:
     * Dominique Feyer
     * Steffen Gebert
     * Claudius Heitz
     * Steffen Müller (leader)
     * Florian Rachor
     * Sonja Scholz
     * Alexander Wahl
     * Thomas Wittek
     * the other friendly ghosts who should add their names

Workshop results
----------------

In a first step, the workshop team went through the various Logging 
possibilities of TYPO3 and discussed their pros and cons.
It turned out that Logging in TYPO3...

     * is too complex,
     * is unstructured and redundant
     * is insufficiently documented,
     * is sometimes neglected,
     * is hard to configure,
     * follows individual practices instead of convention,
     * is not easy to understand, even for the experienced users.

On the other hand there are a lot of good aspects and approaches in 
existing implementations:

     * Easy to use APIs
     * Flexible and extendable views
     * Useful Logging events
     * Valuable mechanism (e.g. deprecation log)

Evaluating the existing Logging not only helped to understand how 
Logging works in TYPO3, but also discovered what could be improved.

In the second part of the workshop, ideas for improvement were developed 
in small groups.

     * Documentation: We need overview docs as well as practical guides 
for the target groups. Team leadership and connection to doc teams needs 
to be pushed.
     * API: Goal: streamline to one single API. Existing APIs were 
collected, new API has to be designed
     * User Interface: Goal: Better filtering and sorting, saveable 
views. Connect to the usability team. Work agile, make prototypes and 
wireframes. (more ideas on the workshop wiki page [1])
     * Configuration: Big cleanup necessary. Features: Predefined 
configuration sets for target groups, shareable sets (more ideas on the 
workshop wiki page)
     * Evaluation of third party systems (results will follow later)

You can find all results in detail on the workshop page of the project 
wiki [1].

It was decided to continue the work in a sub-project for the 4.7 release.

Project pages on forge
----------------------

We already have a project on forge. It can be found at:
http://forge.typo3.org/projects/typo3v4-logging

The workshop results have been documented in the project wiki:
http://forge.typo3.org/projects/typo3v4-logging/wiki/T3DD11-Workshop

These minutes can also be found in the project wiki:
http://forge.typo3.org/projects/typo3v4-logging/wiki/2011-07-11_-_Minutes_from_the_%2236_chambers_of_TYPO3_Logging%22_workshop_at_T3DD11

Want to contribute?
-------------------

If you are interested in participating to continue the work, please 
don't hesitate to login at forge and join the project. Even if you did 
not participate in the workshop, you are invited to join the team.

Credits
-------

Thanks again to all participants. It was a very productive workshop and 
I am impressed by the positive spirit and the results we achieved. Very 
inspiring, very motivating. You made it real!

[1] http://forge.typo3.org/projects/typo3v4-logging/wiki/T3DD11-Workshop

-- 
cheers,
Steffen

TYPO3 Blog: http://www.t3node.com/
Twitter: @t3node - http://twitter.com/t3node