Centralized logging of multi tier applications over web Services with NLog custom targets

Multi tier applications are usually comprised of data tiers, logic tiers and presentation tiers. Logging is the technique that allows us to insert tracing statements which will produce persistent results at runtime with no effort. Modern applications use logging solutions like NLog, C# Logger or one of the many others for tracing. Logger solutions offer different ways to persist data, like database storage, file storage or web service calls for storing logs at the server side. This paper describes an enhancement of NLog which allows for server side log storage even if the logs are produced at the clients without exposing sensible resources that require protection. The goal of this enhancement is to provide high code reusability and ease of implementation to developers using it. The reusability has been attained by separating logging components into assemblies that should be referenced within the developed applications, some at the server side and some at the client side, and the ease of implementation by providing logging through NLog classes after a simple target registration at the application start.