Situation Information

The situation information is used to classify the condition being reported by an event into a common set of situations. The Common Base Event specification [CBE101] provides information on the set of situations defined for the Common Base Event, along with the values and formats used to describe these situations. The Common Base Event Developer’s Guide [CBEBASE] provides general usage guidelines.

There are a few recommendations for situation information for problem determination events, such as:

  • Whenever possible, use the situation categorizations and qualifiers described in the base Common Base Event specification. Avoid using your own situation definitions as much as possible.

  • Not all messages and logs can be classified using the situation definitions supplied in the base Common Base Event specification. Use the OtherSituation categorization to provide your own situation information, but the recommended course of action for problem determination events is to use the ReportSituation categorization, with reportCategory=Log.

  • Warning events can be confusing. A warning event (i.e. an event with severity=warning) typically indicates a recoverable failure, but the situation settings can be interpreted as unrecoverable failures (e.g. ConnectSituation, successDisposition=UNSUCCESSFUL). The appropriate situation categorization should always be used and the severity setting will indicate the severity of the situation, i.e. whether the component recovered from the failure.

  • The recommended setting for the reasoningScope value is EXTERNAL for all message events.