System and methods for monitoring application server performance

• US 20040215768A1
• Filed: 03/03/2004
• Published: 10/28/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 10/02/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Micro Focus LLC (Open Text Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Sarig, Ido, Oulu, Yossi, Mogilevsky, Pinhas
• Granted Patent: US 7,822,844 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3495 for systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/865 Monitoring of software
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/34 involving the movement of software or configuration parameters network booting or remote initial program loading [RIPL] G06F9/4416
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/535 Tracking the activity of the user network monitoring arrangements H04L43/00; recording of computer activity G06F11/34
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 in the application layer [OSI layer 7]

Abstract

A monitoring system monitors the amount of time spent by specific application components, such as Java components, during execution of specific web site transactions. A probe that runs on an application server initially instruments these components (preferably at component load time) to add code for tracking execution start and stop times. When a monitored transaction is executed by the application server, the probe measures the execution times of the invoked components—preferably at the component method level. The resulting measurement data is reported to a reports server, and is used to provide transaction-specific breakdowns of the amount of time spent by each instrumented component, and optionally each instrumented method within such components. In one embodiment, the probe only monitors transactions initiated by agent-generated transaction request messages that are marked or “colored” for monitoring, and thus ignores transactions initiated by actual users.

Claims

1. A method of instrumenting Java components installed on an application server in order to enable the Java components to be monitored, the method comprising:

adding a patch to a class loader class of a Java virtual machine installed on the application server, wherein the patch causes the class loader class to pass Java components to an instrumentation component when said Java components are loaded by the Java virtual machine;

receiving, from a patched version of said class loader class, code of a Java component to be loaded by the Java virtual machine; and

with the instrumentation component, instrumenting said code of the Java component to add functionality for tracking execution times.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein instrumenting said code comprises adding calls to each of a plurality of methods of the Java component, to thereby provide functionality for monitoring execution times of said methods.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein instrumenting said code comprises adding functionality for detecting when the Java component is invoked by a colored transaction request message.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein instrumenting said code comprises adding functionality for reporting transaction identifiers of transactions that invoke the Java component, to thereby allow said execution times to be associated with transactions to which they correspond.