LOG FILE ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION TOOL

• US 20090144699A1
• Filed: 11/30/2007
• Published: 06/04/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 11/30/2007
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Siemens AG
• Original Assignee: Siemens AG
• Inventors: Fendt, Anton, Loehel, Klaus, Poehnlein, Stefan
• Application Number:
  US11/948,027
• Publication Number:
  US 20090144699A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/120
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/004 Error avoidance G06F11/07 and subgroups take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0748 in a remote unit communicating with a single-box computer node experiencing an error/fault remote testing G06F11/2294
• 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 11/0793 Remedial or corrective actions recovery from an exception in an instruction pipeline G06F9/3861; by retry G06F11/1402; for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3476 Data logging G06F11/14, G06F11/2205 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/366 using diagnostics G06F11/0703 takes precedence

Abstract

A method is provided for automatically evaluating a log file of a software module. Prior to an execution of a first version of a software module, the method comprises evaluating all possible messages or events that can occur in a log file of the first version of the software module, and establishing the messages or events as evaluation criteria. Then, during execution of the first version of the software module, generating a log file comprising a plurality of message or events from the software module. Finally, after generation of the log file, the method comprises transferring the log file to an analysis system, automatically evaluating the plurality of messages or events in the transferred log file according to the previously established evaluation criteria, thereby creating relevant developer error information, automatically informing developers about the relevant developer error information. This information is used to further improve the software.

Claims

1. A method for automatically evaluating a log file of a software module, comprising:

prior to an execution of a first version of a software module;

evaluating all possible messages or events that can occur in a log file of the first version of the software module; and

establishing the messages or events as evaluation criteria for a further development phase of the software module;

during execution of the first version of the software module;

generating a log file comprising a plurality of message or events from the software module; and

after generation of the log file;

transferring the log file to an analysis system;

automatically evaluating the plurality of messages or events in the transferred log file according to the previously established evaluation criteria, thereby creating relevant developer error information;

automatically informing developers about the relevant developer error information;

generating, by the developer, a second version of the software module based on the previous software version and the relevant developer error information; and

repeating the steps of evaluating all possible messages and establishing the messages as evaluation criteria for the second version of the software module.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the software module is a module utilized for a medical imaging system.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein evaluating all possible messages or events comprises extracting the messages or events from source code used to design the software module.

4. The method according to claim 1, further comprising classifying the messages or events as being serious, trivial, or none in terms of degree of seriousness.

5. The method according to claim 1, further comprising classifying the messages or events as being a Type-1 event that represents an occurrence of a problem which disturbs the workflow during a physical examination, and a Type-2 event that represents the occurrence of a problem, which does not disturb the workflow of the physical examination.

6. The method according to claim 5, further comprising calculating relevant figures per Type-1 and Type-2 events.

7. The method according to claim 1, wherein the log file is stored as a spreadsheet file.

8. The method according to claim 1, wherein the log files is subject to a compression algorithm prior to storage.

9. The method according to claim 1, wherein the transferring of the log file occurs on a periodic basis according to a predefined criteria.

10. The method according to claim 1, where automatically informing developers comprises creating an evaluation with regard to individual software versions for developers.

11. The method according to claim 1, further comprising planning and implementing upgrades based on a statistically relevant number of automatically monitored systems.

12. The method according to claim 1, wherein the generated log file further comprises information on system states.

13. The method according to claim 12, wherein the system states comprise a state selected from the group consisting of:

examination, boot, shutdown, service and software installation.

14. The method according to claim 1, wherein the software versions are installed in a field setting, at a testing center, in a supply chain management setting, and in a development environment.

15. The method according to claim 1, further comprising transmitting the generated message or event to an individual responsible for a component that generated the message or area.

16. The method according to claim 1, further comprising calculating a number based on a number of events occurring.

17. The method according to claim 16, wherein the number is based on a number of fluoroscopy imagings and acquisitions divided by a number of events.

18. The method according to claim 1, further comprising filtering the events or messages in the transferred log file according to a predefined criteria and placing the filtered events or messages into a result file.

19. The method according to claim 18, wherein the result file is stored in an SQL database.

20. The method according to claim 18, further comprising utilizing predefined pattern files for the filtering.