FFDC feature in WebSPhere Portal Server 7.0

The WebSphere Application Server has a first failure data capture (FFDC) This tool runs in the background and collects events and errors that occur during WebSphere Application server runtime and logs that information into profiles\\logs\ffdc folder.

Starting from Version 7.0 the WebSphere Portal Server also has this tool. When i was looking at the wp_profile/logs folder yesterday i found ffdc folder like this



The ffdc folder has two types of files

1. WebSphere_Portal_Exception.log: This file contains list of all the exceptions. Whenever failure event happens one line will be added to this file


2. WebSphere_Portal_***.txt: WPS will create a separate file for every failure, this file will have the stack trace for the exception

Important Note: The FFDC tool is supposed to be for IBM support, the support asks for these files when you open a PMR. But i like to read those files when something goes wrong and some time it provides a valuable insight into the problem