How to monitor what are users logged in to the Informatica Data Director Application?

Are you looking for an article on how to monitor IDD users? Are you also looking for information what changes need to be made in order to achieve it? If yes, then refer this article. This article explains what is need of user monitoring and how to configure it.

Introduction

The Informatica Data Director (IDD) is one of the business critical application. The various business users uses IDD application. It is always good idea to monitor users using the application for security reason. In lower environments such as development or QA, it become more tedious to  track who made the change. So having monitory control on login mechanism will try to avoid such incidents. This articles helps to configure IDD application for monitoring users who uses it.

Configuration file

We need to use log4j.xml file to log users which uses IDD application. We can use existing log file or can create new  log file.

File Location

We need to update log4j.xml file from below location

<install directory>\hub\server\conf

Code Changes

Add the code below after consoleappender code in the log4j.xml file

<!-- File appender for Login Tracker-->

    <appender name="loginAppender" class="org.apache.log4j.RollingFileAppender">

        <param name="File" value="/hub/server/logs/LoginTracker.log"/>

        <param name="MaxBackupIndex" value="5"/>

        <param name="MaxFileSize" value="500MB"/>

        <param name="Threshold" value="DEBUG"/>

        <layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout">

            <!-- The default pattern: Date Priority [Category] Thread Message -->

            <param name="ConversionPattern" value="[%d{ISO8601}] [%t] [%-5p] %c: %m%n"/>

        </layout>

    </appender>

    <!-- Added the following category to invoke the appender for Login Tracker -->

    <category name="com.siperian.dsapp.common.util.LoginLogger">

        <priority value="INFO"/>

     <appender-ref ref="loginAppender"/>

    </category>

    <!-- Added the following category to invoke the appender for Login Tracker of MDM-->

    <category name="com.siperian.sam.authn.jaas.JndiLoginModule">

        <priority value="INFO"/>

     <appender-ref ref="loginAppender"/>

    </category>

Server Restart

Normally application server restart is not required. However, if log file is not generated after above code changes then restart the application server.

How to analyze the log file

If user is logged in or logged out then this information will be stored in the log file. The log file entry will look like as below :

[2018-09-25 15:03:31,774] [http-/0.0.0.0:8080-5] [INFO ] com.siperian.dsapp.common.util.LoginLogger: User <admin> logged into IDD

[2018-09-25 15:04:14,255] [http-/0.0.0.0:8080-2] [INFO ] com.siperian.dsapp.common.util.LoginLogger: User <admin> has been logged out of the IDD"

[2018-09-25 15:04:14,329] [http-/0.0.0.0:8080-2] [INFO ] com.siperian.dsapp.common.util.LoginLogger: User <testuser> logged into IDD

[2018-09-25 15:05:16,295] [http-/0.0.0.0:8080-5] [INFO ] com.siperian.dsapp.common.util.LoginLogger: User <testuser> has been logged out of the IDD"

[2018-09-25 15:05:16,295] [http-/0.0.0.0:8080-5] [INFO ] com.siperian.dsapp.common.util.LoginLogger: User <admin> has been logged out of the IDD"

[2018-09-25 15:05:23,309] [http-/0.0.0.0:8080-6] [INFO ] com.siperian.dsapp.common.util.LoginLogger: User <jamesmanager> logged into IDD

[2018-09-25 15:06:32,365] [http-/0.0.0.0:8080-7] [INFO ] com.siperian.dsapp.common.util.LoginLogger: User <jamesmanager> has been logged out of the IDD"

The video below provides additional information about how to monitor users which are logged in the IDD Application.