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Connecting with integrated development environments to identify, debug, and resolve application issues

Integrated development environments (IDEs) boost programmer productivity by providing interconnected components with consistent user interfaces. They serve as a single platform for authoring, modifying, compiling, deploying, and debugging software. 

You can connect the BMC Helix platform with an IDE by using the BMC Helix plug-in available for the supported IDEs. By integrating with the BMC Helix environment, your development team can identify, debug, and resolve application issues in production environments in real-time, all within a single interface, without the need to access multiple applications. 

As a developer, you can download the BMC Helix IDE plug-in and connect your environment to any of the supported IDEs. 

Information
Scenario

Jim is a NOC operator at Apex Global. Apex Global uses BMC Helix applications to manage all IT operations and Jim uses BMC Helix AIOps to get a 360-degree view of the IT infrastructure. If a service is impacted, say Apex-online, the impact is shown on the heatmap, with the number of events and situations generated for the service. Jim drills down to investigate the root cause in the Analyze Root Cause panel and realizes that an impact on a particular host causes all events. Jim realizes this is not a configuration issue, and he wants to open an incident and have the development team look at it. The incident is assigned to Susan. Susan has BMC Helix Plugin for IntelligJ IDEA. Susan is able to look at the code and, by using the BMC Helix plug-in, get the logs, events, and traces to find more details from the production environment directly.

Benefits

By connecting with the BMC Helix environment, developers can achieve the following benefits:

  • View and analyze logs directly in your IDE instead of switching to BMC Helix Log Analytics.
  • Perform real-time debugging of applications and microservices by using data collected from live production systems
  • Search and fetch relative BMC Helix logs data directly from the IDE console
  • Automatically fetch in-context data based on relevancy and timestamps
  • Display results in the Output panel (VS Code) or the Logs panel (IntelliJ), depending on the IDE.

Supported IDEs

By using the BMC Helix IDE plug-in, you can connect with the following integrated development platforms:

  • Visual Studio (VS) Code 1.98.1
  • IntelliJ IDEA 2024.3

Before you begin

Before configuring the BMC Helix plug-in, make sure that the following conditions are met:

  • You have valid credentials to access and download the BMC Helix IDE plug-in from the BMC Electronic Product Distribution website.
  • You download the plug-in on the same server where your IDE is installed and running.
  • You have valid permissions to install and configure plug-ins in your BMC Helix environment.
  • You have the tenant URL, access key, and secret key required to connect with the BMC Helix environment.
    For more information about generating access key and secret key for a tenant, see Setting up access keys for programmatic access

To download the plug-in

  1. Log in to the BMC Electronic Product Distribution (URL to be changed based on the actual EPD link) site using your support ID and password.
    You might also be prompted to complete the Export Compliance Form. If you are accessing this site for the first time, create a new EPD profile to specify the languages and platforms you want to download. For assistance with EPD, see EPD site help.
  2. Download the BMC Helix plug-in zip file for your chosen IDE:
    • Visual Studio Code: bmc-helix-extension-search.vsix
    • IntelliJ IDEA: BMC Helix Plugin-1.0-SNAPSHOT
  3. Continue to the next step to install and configure the plug-in.

To install the plug-in

To install the plug-in as an extension in Visual Studio Code:

  1. Open VS Code and navigate to Extensions.  
  2. Click … and select Install from VSIX.
  3. Navigate to the location where bmc-helix-extension-search.vsix is available and click Install.
    The extension is installed successfully. 

To install the plugin in IntelliJ IDEA:

  1. Open IntelliJ IDEA and navigate to File > Settings > Plugins. 
  2. Click Install Plugins from Disk.
  3. Navigate to the location where BMC Helix AIOps Plugin-1.0-SNAPSHOT is available and click Apply. 
    The plug-in is installed successfully. 

To configure the plug-in

To configure the plug-in as an extension in Visual Studio Code:

  1. Open VS Code and navigate to File > Preferences > Settings > Users > BMC Helix Extension Settings and provide the following details:
    FieldDescription
    Base URLSpecify your BMC Helix tenant URL.
    Access Key

    Specify the access key generated for your BMC Helix tenant.

    Secret KeySpecify the secret key generated for your BMC Helix tenant. 
  2. To refine the search criteria for retrieving logs and events, configure additional properties for the project:
    1. Open the command prompt and navigate to the service that you want to investigate in VS Code. 
    2. Set the CRITERIA environment variable and specify the fields for retrieving logs. 
      For example, to retrieve logs for a specific host, specify the log_source_host parameter, with a valid value.
      1742818975197-230.png
    3. Set the CRITERIA environment variable and specify the fields for retrieving events. 
      1742971836766-607.png

To configure the plug-in in IntelliJ IDEA:

  1. Open IntelliJ IDEA and navigate to File > Settings > BMC Helix Plugin Settings and provide the following details:
    FieldDescription
    Base URLSpecify your BMC Helix tenant URL.
    Access Key

    Specify the access key generated for your BMC Helix tenant.

    Secret KeySpecify the secret key generated for your BMC Helix tenant. 
  2. To refine the search criteria, configure additional properties for the project:
    1. Open your project in the IDE and create a config.properties file. 
    2. Specify the log fields in a key-value pair.  
      Logs are retrieved based on the parameters defined in the config.properties file. 
      For example, to retrieve logs for a specific host, specify the log_source_host parameter, with a valid value in the file. 
    3. Specify alert parameters in a key-value pair.
      Events are retrieved based on the parameters defined in the config.properties file. 
      Note that you can only specify log-based events in a comma-separated list. These parameters are displayed when you search for events in the project later. 
      1742971087669-134.png

To search and view logs, events, and traces for a service

Perform the following steps to view in-context log data for the microservice or the application: 

  1. Log in to your IDE and navigate to the application code.
    For example, you might learn that there’s a problem with the Apex online service. You want to debug and identify the source and the exact root cause of the problem by investigating the service.
  2. To view all logs related to the host, select the host name from the code, and from the context menu select BMC Helix > Logs.
    Logs are displayed in the console window, and the filter criteria are shown on the top.
    The following figure shows an example of retrieving logs for a service in IntelliJ IDEA environment:
    Search for logs in IDE
  3. To view logs related to an exception, select the string, right-click, and select BMC Helix > Logs. 
    Logs are displayed in the console window, and the filter criteria are shown on the top.   
    Log Results in the IDE console
  4. (Optional) Right-click anywhere in the IDE console and in the Search Logs dialog box, type the parameter. 
    Logs that match the search string are displayed in the console window. 
  5. To retrieve events, from the context menu, select BMC Helix > Events.
  6. From the dialog box, select All Alerts or any of the configured parameters and click OK.  
    Events that match the search criteria are displayed in the console window. 

 

Tip: For faster searching, add an asterisk to the end of your partial query. Example: cert*

BMC Helix AIOps 25.3