US Patent 7721266 Unified logging service with a logging formatter

An integrated tracing and logging system for an enterprise network. One embodiment of the integrated logging and tracing system has an object-oriented architecture which includes a controller class with two sub-classes: a tracing sub-class and a logging sub-class. Instances of the tracing sub-class (tracing modules) are associated with specified program code regions of network applications. The tracing modules receive method calls from the network applications and process the method calls based on defined severity levels. Instances of the logging sub-class (logging modules) are associated with specified “categories” related to the enterprise network (e.g., system, database, etc). The logging modules receive and process method calls from network components associated with the categories. The integrated logging and tracing system allows the format of tracing and logging messages to be configured without recompiling any source code.