Automated system documentation generation

• US 10,296,445 B2
• Filed: 09/13/2015
• Issued: 05/21/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 09/13/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: CA, Inc. (d/b/a CA Technologies) (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: CA, Inc. (d/b/a CA Technologies) (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: Lau, Rich J.
• Primary Examiner(s): Zhen, Wei Y
• Assistant Examiner(s): Huda, Mohammed
• Application Number:
  US14/852,598
• Publication Number:
  US 20170075798A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,346 Days
• Field of Search: 717125, 714 3814
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/30 Monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3664 Environments for testing or debugging software
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/368 for test version control, e.g. updating test cases to a new software version
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3688 for test execution, e.g. scheduling of test suites
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/295 Named entity recognition
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/73 Program documentation

Abstract

A transaction is initiated that involves a plurality of software components in a system. Transaction data is received from a plurality of agents instrumented on at least a subset of software components in the plurality of software components, the transaction data describing attributes of a plurality of fragments of the transaction observed by the plurality of agents. Each transaction fragment includes a respective request and a corresponding response communicated between two software components in the plurality of software components. From the transaction data, a flow of the transaction is determined that describes an order of the transaction fragments and involvement of respective software components in each transaction fragment. Documentation is generated from the transaction data, the documentation describing the system and including a representation of a functional architecture of the system based on the determined flow.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method comprising:

initiating a transaction involving a plurality of software components in a system;

automatically identifying a request to generate documentation for the system within a particular user session;

receiving transaction data from a plurality of agents instrumented on at least a subset of software components in the plurality of software components, wherein the transaction data describes a plurality of transactions performed using the plurality of software components and observed by the plurality of agents, the transaction data further describes attributes of a plurality of fragments of a particular one of the plurality of transactions performed within the particular user session, and each of the fragments comprises a respective request and a corresponding response communicated between two respective software components in the plurality of software components;

automatically determining a subset of the transaction data describing the particular transaction, wherein the subset of the transaction data corresponds to the particular user session;

automatically determining, from the subset of the transaction data, a flow of the particular transaction describing an order of the transaction fragments and involvement of respective software components in each transaction fragment; and

automatically generating, from the subset of the transaction data, documentation describing the system, wherein the documentation comprises a representation of a functional architecture of the system based on the determined flow and is responsive to the request to generate documentation.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the representation identifies interactions between the plurality of software components.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the representation comprises a graphical representation.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the graphical representation comprises graphical elements representing each of the plurality of software components and each of the transaction fragments, wherein the graphical elements representing the transaction fragments comprise respective line elements each connecting two corresponding graphical elements representing the software components involved in the corresponding transaction fragment.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the graphical representation comprises a tree representing the flow of the transaction.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the representation describes at least a portion of the attributes described in the transaction data.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving a request to generate the documentation, wherein the transaction is initiated based on the request.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the transaction corresponds to the request.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the transaction comprises a plurality of transactions related to the request.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising identifying a documentation template corresponding to the request and using the documentation template to generate the documentation.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising isolating the subset of transaction data from a collection of other transaction data comprising transaction data generated from the other transactions.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein isolating the transaction comprises identifying a remote IP address corresponding to the request to generate documentation for the system and filtering the collection of transaction data by the remote IP address.

13. The method of claim 11, further comprising generating a graphical representation of one of the other transactions based on the transaction data generated for the other transactions.

14. The method of claim 11, wherein the particular transaction comprises an instance of a particular transaction type and the one of the other transactions comprises another instance of the particular transaction type and a particular one of the plurality of software components is used in each of the instances of the particular transaction type.

15. A non-transitory computer readable medium having program instructions stored therein, wherein the program instructions are executable by a computer system to perform operations comprising:

initiating a transaction involving a plurality of software components in a system;

automatically identifying a request to generate documentation for the system within a particular user session;

receiving transaction data from a plurality of agents instrumented on at least a subset of software components in the plurality of software components, wherein the transaction data describes a plurality of transactions performed using the plurality of software components and observed by the plurality of agents, the transaction data further describes attributes of a plurality of fragments of a particular one of the plurality of transactions performed the particular user session, and each of the fragments comprises a respective request and a corresponding response communicated between two respective software components in the plurality of software components;

automatically determining a subset of the transaction data describing the particular transaction, wherein the subset of the transaction data corresponds to the particular user session;

automatically determining, from the subset of the transaction data, a flow of the transaction describing an order of the transaction fragments and involvement of respective software components in each transaction fragment; and

automatically generating, from the subset of the transaction data, documentation describing the system, wherein the documentation comprises a representation of a functional architecture of the system based on the determined flow and is responsive to the request to generate documentation.

16. A system comprising:

a data processing apparatus;

a memory device;

a software transaction analysis engine executable by the data processing apparatus to;

initiate a transaction involving a plurality of software components in a system;

automatically identify a request to generate documentation for the system within a particular user session;

receive transaction data from a plurality of agents instrumented on at least a subset of software components in the plurality of software components, wherein the transaction data describes a plurality of transactions performed using the plurality of software components and observed by the plurality of agents, the transaction data further describes attributes of a plurality of fragments of a particular one of the plurality of transactions performed within the particular user session, and each of the fragments comprises a respective request and a corresponding response communicated between two respective software components in the plurality of software components;

automatically determine a subset of the transaction data describing the particular transaction, wherein the subset of the transaction data corresponds to the particular user session; and

automatically determine, from the subset of the transaction data, a flow of the particular transaction describing an order of the transaction fragments and involvement of respective software components in each transaction fragment; and

a documentation generator executable by the data processing apparatus to automatically generate, from the subset of the transaction data, documentation describing the system, wherein the documentation comprises a representation of a functional architecture of the system based on the determined flow and is responsive to the request to generate documentation.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the documentation generator is further to identify a particular one of a plurality of documentation templates and populate the particular documentation template with information from the transaction data to generate the documentation.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the representation comprises a graphical representation and the particular documentation template is populated to include the graphical representation.