PROBLEM DETERMINATION IN DISTRIBUTED ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS

• US 20080201642A1
• Filed: 04/23/2008
• Published: 08/21/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 04/08/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: TSANG, Arthur, CHOW, Raymond, LAM, Robert S., PATEL, Tushar M., CHAN, Joseph L., SO, Chi Hong, CHONG, James C., HELER, Jean-Jacques, TSANG, Henry
• Granted Patent: US 7,953,848 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/736
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/079 Root cause analysis, i.e. error or fault diagnosis in a hardware test environment G06F11/22; in a software test environment G06F11/36
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/302 where the computing system component is a software system
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3409 for performance assessment
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/51 Discovery or management thereof, e.g. service location protocol [SLP] or web services

Abstract

A method, system and computer program are provided for problem determination in an enterprise computer system in a distributed environment. In the method, information is obtained regarding the enterprise applications, and high-level information is presented to a user, with one or more prompts are provided to the user for more detailed information. In response to a request from a user for more detailed information about the application, more detailed information is provided to the user. Several levels of more detailed information about applications, including information as to individual threads, is available. The method also includes the steps of receiving instructions from an administrator to establish an account for a user, associating one or more servers with the account, and providing access to the corresponding user only to the associated servers. In the method, searches may be conducted for strings and requests, and identified strings and requests may be sorted by a variety of criteria.

Claims

1. A system for problem determination for enterprise applications running in a distributed environment, comprising:

means for obtaining information regarding the enterprise applications,

means for presenting high level information of an application server groups level, comprising a plurality of first information items, selected from said obtained information in a format accessible to a user, wherein the high level information includes an indication of whether each server is available or unavailable and information of throughput of an application on each server group including information as to a number of completed requests, wherein availability or unavailability is measured by monitoring of requests processed by at least one application and by monitoring delta CPU usage, delta throughput volume, and delta memory usage attributable to the at least one application, wherein availability is based on availability of application software running on a server, wherein the information of throughput is used to identify trends,

means for receiving a request from a user by selection of at least one of said first information items for more detailed information as to one or more of said first information items, wherein the selection selects an application,

means for displaying the requested more detailed information of an application server group level to the user in response to the request, comprising a plurality of second information items including information identifying each server and indicating

CPU usage, a total number of completed requests, an incremental number of completed requests, and memory usage for the identified server for the selected application, wherein the plurality of second information items are used to determine a source of a problem,

means for receiving another request from the user by selection of at least one of said second information items for still more detailed information at an application level, wherein the selection selects a server, and

means for displaying said still more detailed information comprising information on a thread-by-thread basis as to at least one of said servers, wherein each thread is being executed by a server at a particular point in time, wherein the information on a thread includes information relating to speed of execution of the thread and to use of system resources by the thread, wherein information relating to the speed of execution is used to determine whether that thread is executing, and wherein the information relating to use of the system resources is used to determine whether that thread is preventing other threads from gaining access to the system resources.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein said means for presenting high level information comprises means for presenting information about application performance on a plurality of servers.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the application performance information comprises information as to the number of completed requests over a plurality of recent time periods.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein said means for providing more detailed information comprises displaying concurrently information concerning use by one application of each of a plurality of servers.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the provided information comprises use of CPU of each server by the selected application.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein said information on a thread-by-thread basis comprises information as to a client request identifying each thread.

7. The system of claim 1, further comprising means for providing a filter having one or more criteria and selectively displaying only those of said threads meeting said criteria.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein said criteria comprise at least one request type.

9. The system of claim 1, further comprising means for presenting still more detailed information with respect to a selected thread.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein said still more detailed information with respect to a selected thread comprises an execution history in terms of a method trace of a request being processed by the selected thread.

11. The system of claim 10, further comprising providing a list of method calls.

12. A computer program for problem determination for enterprise applications running in a distributed environment, said program consisting of instructions stored on a machine-readable storage medium, said instructions, when executed on a processor causing the processor to execute:

presenting high level information of an application server groups level, comprising a plurality of first information items, selected from said obtained information in a format accessible to a user, wherein the high level information includes an indication of whether each server is available or unavailable and information of throughput of an application on each server group including information as to a number of completed requests, wherein availability or unavailability is measured by monitoring of requests processed by at least one application and by monitoring delta CPU usage, delta throughput volume, and delta memory usage attributable to the at least one application, wherein availability is based on availability of application software running on a server, wherein the information of throughput is used to identify trends,

receiving a request from a user by selection of at least one of said first information items for more detailed information as to one or more of said first information items, wherein the selection selects an application,

displaying the requested more detailed information of an application server group level to the user in response to the request, comprising a plurality of second information items including information identifying each server and indicating CPU usage, a total number of completed requests, an incremental number of completed requests, and memory usage for the identified server for the selected application, wherein the plurality of second information items are used to determine a source of a problem,

receiving another request from the user by selection of at least one of said second information items for still more detailed information at an application level, wherein the selection selects a server, and

displaying said still more detailed information comprising information on a thread-by-thread basis as to at least one of said servers, wherein each thread is being executed by a server at a particular point in time, wherein the information on a thread includes information relating to speed of execution of the thread and to use of system resources by the thread, wherein information relating to the speed of execution is used to determine whether that thread is executing, and wherein the information relating to use of the system resources is used to determine whether that thread is preventing other threads from gaining access to the system resources.

13. The computer program of claim 12, wherein presenting high level information comprises presenting information about application performance on a plurality of servers.

14. The computer program of claim 13, wherein the application performance information comprises information as to the number of completed requests over a plurality of recent time periods.

15. The computer program of claim 12, wherein providing more detailed information comprises displaying concurrently information concerning use by one application of each of a plurality of servers.

16. The computer program of claim 15, wherein the provided information comprises use of CPU of each server by the selected application.

17. The computer program of claim 12, wherein said information on a thread-by-thread basis comprises information as to a client request identifying each thread.

18. The computer program of claim 12, further comprising providing a filter having one or more criteria and selectively displaying only those of said threads meeting said criteria.

19. The computer program of claim 18, wherein said criteria comprise at least one request type.

20. The computer program of claim 18, further comprising providing still more detailed information with respect to a selected thread.

21. The computer program of claim 20, wherein said still more detailed information with respect to a selected thread comprises an execution history in terms of a computer program trace of a request being processed by the selected thread.

22. The computer program of claim 16, further comprising providing a list of computer program calls.