Where did ULSTraceLog go to in the SharePoint 2010 Logging Database?

The Logging Database is one of the many new concepts that will make the life of many SharePoint administrators quite a bit more enjoyable. In SharePoint 2007 the Unified Logging System (ULS) logged all of its data to text files, typically found on your SharePoint server in 12\LOGS. We still have that in SharePoint 2010, but besides those text files, ULS can also write the data to a database! The advantages are obvious: easy to query, one central location for all servers in the farm, easy to build reports etc. You can find this ULS data in the SharePoint 2010 logging database (typically called WSS_Logging), in the view ULSTraceLog.

Quite recently on one of my demo machines (standalone installation on Windows 7) I noticed the ULSTraceLog view was not available in the logging database. It turned out that there is a Timer Job that’s responsible for writing the data to the database, when the Timer Job hasn’t executed, the view is not there (the first time it executes, the view is created). Even more, the timer job was disabled, so the view would never be created, nor any data would be written to the database. If you encounter this situation as well, it’s quite easy to solve:

1. Open the SharePoint Central Administration site
2. Navigate to the Monitoring section
3. Select Review Job Definitions
4. Click on the job with the name Diagnostic Data Provider: Trace Log
5. Click on the Enable button to enable it
6. Optionally click on Run Now afterwards, to start it immediately

There you go, the ULSTraceLog will be created and the ULS messages will appear in the database!