Lack of logging and monitoring tools cited as severe concern for HealthCare.gov:
Like many of us who’ve lived through the stress of high-profile roll-outs, I’ve been following the news about HealthCare.gov with a lot of empathy for the devs working hard under extreme pressure. I was reminded of my own past when I read this quote from a front page article on CNN:
_One concern, listed as “severe,” warned, “CGI does not have access to necessary tools to manage envs in test, imp, and prod. Specifically (1) we don’t have access to central log collection / view (2) we don’t have access to monitoring tools.
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Writing health care software is tough
When we formed our company back in 1999, our first big project was a web-based health benefits portal linking employees with insurers. It was far less ambitious than HealthCare.gov, but there were only a dozen of us charged with taking the site from napkin to launch in just six months to meet an immovable open enrollment window.
It was pre-.NET and we hand-rolled a scalable architecture from a mixture of C++, VB6, and dynamic VBScript to handle all the crazy business rules and data transforms required for the dozens of arcane batch-oriented backend mainframes we had to talk with. So many edge cases, so many unknowns. Mostly, I remember working round-the-clock 7 days a week and catching the occasional catnap on the cots we set up in our data center.
Quality logging saved our bacon
The number one thing that really saved us on that project was high-quality logging and monitoring tools. In fact, it was the impetus behind our mission to build the world’s best logging solution for .NET.
Gibraltar Loupe is the expression of our commitment to a world of rock solid software that doesn’t crash or frustrate users. It’s a bold goal shared by countless software craftsmen that will require all kinds of technology, process and education to achieve. We’re passionate about logging because this is how we contribute to that vision.
We created Loupe to make it easy to find and fix flaws in .NET applications. The Loupe logging framework and desktop analysis tool are our completely free contribution to the community. For teams that want more, we make Loupe Server available as a service or a licensed product so that every team can have the right tools for collaborating to improve their software. Give us a shout if you have any questions. Helping you get going with Loupe helps us fulfill our mission.
We also constantly improve our software. We use Loupe on itself and regularly monitor logs generated by Loupe Desktop and Loupe Server to proactively fix bugs and bottlenecks. And we pride ourselves on delivering extraordinary tech support. We’re all about making your job easier, so if something in Loupe is broken or confusing or otherwise wasting your time, that’s unacceptable to us.
Would your .NET project benefit from world-class logging with smart notifications, streamlined error management, and great impact and root cause analysis capabilities? If so, give Loupe a try. We’ve even made it tablet-friendly so you don’t have to sleep on a cot in your data center.