Techniques are provided for automatically tracking errors encountered by a software system. An occurrence of an error that affects performance of an operation being performed by a database server is detected. In response to detecting the occurrence, error information about the error is automatically recorded in a storage space within a database that is managed by the database server. The error information is automatically recorded by executing one or more computer instructions in a first code path of the database server, where the first code path is a separate code path than a second code path of the database server that performs the operation whose performance is affected by the error.