Identifying boundaries of substrings to be extracted from log files

• US 10,387,441 B2
• Filed: 11/30/2016
• Issued: 08/20/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 11/30/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Le, Vu Minh, Gulwani, Sumit
• Primary Examiner(s): Lewis, Cheryl
• Application Number:
  US15/365,103
• Publication Number:
  US 20180150500A1
• Time in Patent Office: 993 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/254 Extract, transform and load [ETL] procedures, e.g. ETL data flows in data warehouses

Abstract

Described herein are various technologies pertaining to identifying boundaries of a substring in a log file, wherein the substring is to be extracted from the log file and used to construct a table. An indication is received that a user has selected a beginning boundary of the substring, and the ending boundary of the substring is automatically identified.

Claims

1. A computing system comprising:

at least one processor; and

memory storing instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to perform acts comprising;

detecting that a user has selected a character in a string of a log file;

responsive to receiving user selection of the character, setting forth a suggestion, wherein the suggestion is set forth by the at least one processor, and further wherein the suggestion is indicative of a potential substring in the string that is to be extracted from the log file;

receiving confirmation that the user has accepted the suggestion; and

constructing a table responsive to receiving the confirmation that the user has selected the suggestion, wherein entries of the table are based upon records in the log file, and wherein an entry in the table is based upon the potential substring.

2. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the log file comprises at least one header line, at least one comment line, and a plurality of data lines, and further wherein the character is in a data line in the plurality of data lines.

3. The computing system of claim 1, wherein detecting that the user has selected the the character comprises detecting that the character has been set forth by the user by way of a keyboard.

4. The computing system of claim 3, wherein detecting that the character has been set forth by the user by way of the keyboard comprises receiving a sequence of characters set forth by the user by way of the keyboard, wherein the sequence of characters comprises the character, and further wherein the sequence of characters are at a beginning of the potential substring.

5. The computing system of claim 1, the acts further comprising:

tokenizing a portion of the log file, wherein tokenizing the portion of the log file comprises replacing characters in the log file with tokens from a predefined list of tokens; and

setting forth the suggestion based upon the tokenizing of the portion of the log file.

6. The computing system of claim 5, wherein setting forth the suggestion comprises:

identifying the character as a beginning boundary for the suggestion;

identifying a transition between types of tokens subsequent to the character; and

identifying the transition as an ending boundary for the suggestion.

7. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the entry in the table comprises the potential substring.

8. The computing system of claim 1, wherein setting forth the suggestion comprises causing a cursor to snap to an ending boundary of the potential substring in the log file.

9. The computing system of claim 1, wherein setting forth the suggestion comprises populating a text entry field with the potential substring.

10. A method executed by a computing device that comprises at least one processor, the method comprising:

detecting that a user has identified at least one character in a string of a data line in a log file;

responsive to detecting that the user has identified the at least one character, identifying a potential ending boundary of a substring in the string;

setting forth a suggestion responsive to identifying the potential ending boundary of the substring in the string, wherein the suggestion indicates that the substring begins with the at least one character and ends at the ending boundary of the substring, and further wherein the suggestion is set forth by the at least one processor;

determining that the user has accepted the suggestion;

extracting the substring from the log file responsive to determining that the user has accepted the suggestion; and

constructing a table based upon the extracted substring, wherein the table has a plurality of entries, and further wherein an entry in the plurality of entries is based upon the substring.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the entry in the plurality of entries is the substring.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein detecting that the user has identified at least one character in the string of the data line in the log file comprises detecting that the user has highlighted the at least one character in the string of the data line in the log file.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein setting forth the suggestion comprises causing a remainder of the substring to be highlighted.

14. The method of claim 10, wherein detecting that the user has identified at least one character in the string of the data line in the log file comprises detecting that the user has set forth the at least one character in a text entry field.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein setting forth the suggestion comprises populating the text entry field with a remainder of the substring.

16. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

tokenizing the data line in the log file, wherein tokenizing the data line in the log file comprises replacing characters in the data line in the log file with tokens from a set of tokens, and further wherein different tokens represent different types of characters, wherein identifying the potential ending boundary of the substring comprises identifying a transition from one token to another in the tokenized data line.

17. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

prior to detecting that the user has identified the at least one character in the string of the data line in the log file, identifying, without user input, at least one header line and at least one comment line in the log file; and

responsive to identifying the at least one header line and the at least one comment line in the log file, filtering the at least one header line and the at least one comment line from the log file.

18. A computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions that, when executed by at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to perform acts comprising:

detecting that a user has identified a beginning boundary of a substring that is to be extracted from a string of a log file;

responsive to detecting that the user has identified the beginning boundary, identifying a potential ending boundary of the substring, wherein the substring comprises characters that have failed to be identified by the user;

receiving confirmation of the ending boundary of the substring from the user; and

responsive to receiving confirmation of the ending boundary of the substring from the user, extracting the substring from the log file.

19. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 18, the acts further comprising:

constructing a table based upon the extracted substring, wherein the table comprises an entry that is based upon the extracted substring.

20. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 19, wherein detecting that the user has identified the beginning boundary comprises receiving an indication that the user has identified a starting character for the substring.