Summary: We are going to use Groovy for more-than-trivial log-parsing and analytics. The groovy language native functionality seems fairly-well suited for this, but probably far from purpose-built Query Languages.
Questions: Is it well-suited enough to simply teach a dev-ops team to write the rules in native groovy with closures (none of them know groovy)? Or, should I try to create a SQL-like Query Language within groovy for this (which will be more familiar to the average sysadmin/dba)? Is that the idea behind creating DSL's? But is that just re-inventing the wheel and overkill for a small IT company? Should I instead look to integrate one of the countless new and exciting query/analytics languages into Groovy? If so, do any make particular sense? Requirements: I know... every answer depends on requirements/context. The JVMs that runs the scripts each monitor about 15-25 servers, run one copy of the script for each server every 5 minutes, and return 5-500 log lines each time. We currently support about 20 of these JVM's, scaling to 50 or 100 in the next year. If we are successful, we might make a specialty practice out of this form of specialized log-parsing as a service, so efficiency, scalability, modularity, flexibility... all very real factors. Background: I'm not sure if much of the Groovy community is aware, but Logicmonitor is an amazing SAAS based infrastructure monitoring tool that enables users to write custom Groovy scripts to be embedded and executed for monitoring purposes. They just added powershell, but it was groovy-only for a few years now. I've been using these to do custom monitoring of Oracle-based applications for a year (mostly JMX and JDBC queries with lots of math and logic). It's really starting to come together as a contender in the dev-ops monitoring space. They've now added more robust Log-File support, enabling digestion of log files in groovy scripts for the stated purposes of alerting based on what is returned from the script, this is why I am looking for advise on the best approach. Gerald R. Wiltse jerrywil...@gmail.com 248-893-9110 (c) 888-248-7095 (p) 888-272-6046 (f)
