Structured Logging - CI/CD Glossary Definition
Structured logging emits log entries as machine-parseable records (usually JSON) with named fields rather than free-form text lines, so logs can be filtered, aggregated, and queried reliably.
Why structure helps
A field like {"level":"error","build_id":42,"duration_ms":1830} can be indexed and searched, while a plain string Build 42 failed after 1830ms requires brittle regex parsing. Structured logs feed dashboards and alerts directly.
In CI debugging
Emitting structured logs from test and deploy steps lets you correlate a failing CI run with the exact request, build id, or commit, instead of scrolling raw output.
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