Logging Levels

Packages run through the SSIS Catalog can automatically have their logs captured in SQL Server 2012. The SSIS Catalog provides four different log levels – None, Basic, Performance, Verbose. The default log level is Basic.

The table below shows which SSIS events are captured in the [catalog].[operation_messages] view in the four logging levels.

 

Level	Events	Notes
None	None	Captures enough information to say whether the package succeeded or failed, and does not log any messages to the [operation_messages] view.
Basic	OnPreValidateOnPostValidate OnPreExecute OnPostExecute OnInformation OnWarning OnError	Captures similar information to what is displayed on the console by the default when a package is run with dtexec.
Performance	OnWarningOnError	This log level is required to track the performance information for the run (how long it took to run each task / component, etc) but does not log all of the events captured by the Basic log level.
Verbose	All events	The Verbose log level captures all log events (including performance and diagnostic events). This logging level can introduce some overhead on performance – see details blow.

Note that additional information is captured and stored in other tables / views in the SSIS Catalog. For an overview of the Views related to package execution, see Jamie Thomson’s blog post – SSIS Logging in Denali.

When to Use Each Logging Level

None

While the None logging level provides slightly better performance than Basic, I don’t expect that it will be used too often in production environments. This logging level does not capture error and status messages, which makes diagnosing problems difficult. However, if you have Packages Never Fail ™, this logging level might be for you! (Hey, you can always re-run the package with a higher level if something goes wrong…)

Basic

This is the recommended logging level for every day use. It captures important events (like errors and warnings), as well as enough progress information to display what the currently active task is, and how long each task has taken (internally this information is stored in the [catalog].[executable_statistics] view).

Performance

The Performance log level should be used when you are doing benchmarking and performance tuning for your packages. While it actually logs less messages to the [catalog].[operation_messages] view than Basic, it captures a lot more events internally to analyze the performance of the data flow components. As a result, there is a bit more overhead during execution – packages run with Basic will actually run a little faster than Performance (in this case Performance means “give me all of the performance details”, not “run my packages as fast as you can”).

Verbose

The Verbose logging level captures a lot of events (especially when using OLE DB connections, as they generate many DIAGNOSTIC events). Verbose should only be used when trying to debug or diagnose package failures.

Custom Log Events

The only log level that captures custom log events (i.e. special events that are raised with custom / 3rd party SSIS extensions or scripts) is Verbose. Due to the overhead that the Verbose level introduces, I recommend creating your own custom reports if you need to capture these custom events.