All the logging made in Oracle SOA Suite is somehow file-based, except the console logger:

In time, the number of logfiles will grow and can easily exceed several hundred Megabytes. In situations where we deal with big logfiles, we need a different approach in the editing logfiles. One utility worth mentioning is tail. For UNIX systems, this is a standard utility.

For Windows systems, there is a port project that you can find at http://sourceforge.net/projects/tailforwin32/?source=dlp.

Another utility called Bare Tail can also be used, and it can be found at http://www.baremetalsoft.com/baretail/.

To edit the logfile with the tail utility, issue the following command:

<tail_install_dir>\Tail.exe -f AdminServer-diagnostic.log

We get the window of tail with the logfile edited. New messages are coming in at the bottom of the logfile as shown in the following screenshot:

To view the content of the logfiles from the Oracle Enterprise Manager Console, refer to the next recipe, Viewing logfiles in the Enterprise Manager Console.