Logging multiple WS client instances?

[Peter Fuerholz <Pe...@ascom.ch>]

Hi there,

I have a signed WebStart application which logs defaultly into the current 
user's home directory. (If I use a relative path the log file is saved 
under a browser specific path which is not very user friendly.)
There are now cases where it is sensible to start this webstart 
application twice or more times. In this case, all program instances write 
to the same log file which makes it very difficult to read.

I came up with following two solutions:
- Put each log file into a session-specific path, e.g. 
<home>/.<application-name>/<session-id>/<filename>
  session-id must be program instance specific identifier
- Use MDC. Distinguish the different client instances by using different 
MDC-keys.
  - may be a problem using RollingFileAppender (may get messed up 
according older mailing list entry)
  - produces lot of extra data since the case, where > 1 program instance 
is running, is rather small

Is there a default behaviour how to solve this issue?

Thanks,
Peter