Guidance when to use EventFlow? about diagnostics-eventflow HOT 3 CLOSED

@vitaly-pavluk good question

EventFlow is not designed to help with tracing request that span multiple microservices. What it aims to do is to make it easier to aggregate diagnostic information (mostly logs) from multiple sources and/or send these logs to multiple destinations.

For example, say you have a 3rd party library that you use in your service code, and that library provides a lot of useful diagonstic data in case of an error, but it is not using Application Insigths or .NET ILogger to surface this data. With EventFlow you can combine the diagnostic data from your library (via appropriate EventFlow "input") with the diagnostic data from your code that is instrumented via Application Insights/ILogger.

Another example would be if a small portion of your logs needs to be sent to a special destination in addition to the "normal" destination (say, those that represent critical errors need to go to some alerting system ingestion point). A combination of EventFlow "filters" and "outputs" can be used to achieve this.

Since EventFlow was created, many logging/diagnostic libraries, incl. AppInsights, have matured significantly, and some of the original scenarios that prompted the creation of EventFlow libraries can now be handled without employing it. That said, EventFlow is there if you need it.

Hope this helps; happy to answer any follow-up questions you may have.

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@karolz-ms
Thank you for the clarification.
I believe it would be helpful to everyone who makes decisions regarding the EventFlow library to have clear guidance on when to use it and cases when to avoid using this library.
I know for sure that all Microsoft libraries (especially Azure-related) use diagnostics and the EventFlow will help reveal all internal traces produced by them.
Anyway.
Thank you.

from diagnostics-eventflow.

Agreed. I am going to make this issue a "discussion" so other can find, ask questions, and add thoughts as necessary.

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