Serilog.Sinks.OCEL 1.0.0

Serilog.Sinks.OCEL

Serilog sinks that write events to Object-Centric Event Logs (OCEL) [1], using the .NET OCEL library.

There is a separate sinks for each of the supported OCEL format: Serilog.Sinks.OCEL.Sinks.OcelJsonSink, Serilog.Sinks.OCEL.Sinks.OcelXmlSink, and Serilog.Sinks.OCEL.Sinks.OcelLiteDbSink.

Rolling files are supported by configuring the log directory and file name separately. Depending on the rolling period, the file name is prepended with an identifier.

Sample configuration:

Log.Logger = new LoggerConfiguration()
    .MinimumLevel.Information()
    .WriteTo.OcelLiteDbSink(new LiteDbSinkOptions(string.Empty, "log.db", RollingPeriod.Never))
    .CreateLogger();

Supported formats

The OCEL standard is defined for both JSON and XML. Both include a validation schema that is used by the library to validate input.

An additional useful format is to store OCEL data in document databases such as MongoDB [2]. A very good alternative for .NET is LiteDB, which is an embedded NoSQL database that is similar to MongoDB. It allows writing to files directly and does not require a database server to use. Support for MongoDB will be evaluated in the future.

Performance

JSON and XML files cannot simply be appended like a text file or a database table. They have to be parsed entirely before new events can be added, and then serialized again. This is very inefficient with long rolling periods and small batches. Therefore, it is recommended to use the LiteDb sink for all logging. The JSON and XML formats are included mostly for completeness. The OCEL library can be used to later convert between formats or even merge multiple files together.

References

[1] Farhang, A., Park, G. G., Berti, A., & Aalst, W. Van Der. (2020). OCEL Standard. http://ocel-standard.org/

[2] Berti, A., Ghahfarokhi, A. F., Park, G., & van der Aalst, W. M. P. (2021). A Scalable Database for the Storage of Object-Centric Event Logs. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, 3098, 19–20. https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.05639.