INCIDENT SIMULATION SUPPORT ENVIRONMENT

• US 20090177926A1
• Filed: 01/09/2008
• Published: 07/09/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 01/09/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: SAP SE
• Original Assignee: SAP AG (SAP SE)
• Inventors: Schneider, Thomas, Sattler, Juergen, Haeberle, Tilmann
• Granted Patent: US 8,234,633 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/37
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2294 by remote test

Abstract

This disclosure describes software for supporting an application. In one aspect, software for supporting a business application receives error and dynamic context information from a remote business application in response to an incident. The dynamic context information at least partially identifies one or more business objects (BOs) associated with the incident. The software is further operable to clone at least one of the BOs associated with the incident. The software can then start a transaction simulating the incident. Conversely, the business application (or other supported software) can transmit error and dynamic context information to support software related to an incident within having a particular execution environment. In response to an automated request from the support software executing a simulated transaction simulating the incident, the supported software communicates a clone of one of the associated BOs to the support software. Alternatively, the software re-directs service calls instead of cloning BOs.

Claims

1. Software for supporting a business application, the software comprising computer readable instructions embedded on media and operable when executed to:

receive error information and dynamic context information from a remote business application in response to an incident, the dynamic context information at least partially identifying a plurality of business objects associated with the incident;

clone at least one of the business objects associated with the incident;

initiate a transaction simulating at least a portion of the incident using the cloned business object; and

when requested by a support user, start a debugging session running concurrently with the transaction simulating the incident.

2. The software of claim 1 further operable to disable a business consistency check before cloning the business object.

3. The software of claim 1 further operable to copy data that were involved in the incident, wherein the data comprises at least one of:

business configuration data, user data, organizational data, master data, and transactional data.

4. The software of claim 1, wherein cloning comprises invoking a cloning service implemented in one of the business objects.

5. The software of claim 1, wherein a portion of the cloned business object is stored in a local business object database.

6. The software of claim 1, wherein initiating the transaction comprises presenting a user interface that simulates the user interface of the remote business interface during the incident.

7. The software of claim 1, wherein initiating the transaction comprises retrieving a portion of the data associated with a cloned business object by executing business logic contained in the cloned business object.

8. The software of claim 1, wherein initiating the transaction comprises retrieving a portion of the data associated with a cloned business object by executing persistence logic.

9. The software of claim 1, wherein the debugging session allows a user to trace code in multiple levels of a software stack associated with the transaction simulating the incident.

10. Software for supporting a business application, the software comprising computer readable instructions embedded on media and operable when executed to:

receive error information and dynamic context information from a remote business application in response to an incident, the incident having a particular execution environment when the incident was created, the dynamic context information identifying a plurality of business objects associated with the incident, and the dynamic context information comprising information identifying aspects of the particular execution environment;

initiate a transaction simulating the incident;

redirect at least one service call to a plug-in, the plug-in parsing the dynamic context information to return data that simulate the particular execution environment; and

when requested by a support user, execute a debugging session that runs concurrently with the transaction simulating the incident.

11. The software of claim 10 further operable to extract data from the dynamic context information that were involved in the incident, wherein the data comprises at least one of:

business configuration data, user data, organizational data, master data, and transactional data.

12. The software of claim 10 further operable to load into memory one of the business objects associated with the incident such that the business logic contained within the business objects is executed partially instead of being redirected to the plug-in.

13. The software of claim 12, wherein redirecting service calls to a plug-in comprises redirecting to plug-in-only service calls to a database layer.

14. The software of claim 12, wherein the debugging session allows a user to trace code in multiple levels above the database layer of a software stack of the transaction simulating the incident.

15. The software of claim 10, wherein starting the transaction simulating the incident comprises starting a user interface that simulates the user interface of the remote business interface during the incident.

16. Software utilizing communicably coupled support software, the software comprising computer readable instructions embedded on media and operable when executed to:

transmit error information and dynamic context information to support software related to an incident, the incident having a particular execution environment when the incident was created, the dynamic context information identifying a plurality of business objects associated with the incident, and the dynamic context information comprising information identifying aspects of the particular execution environment; and

in response to an automated request from the support software executing a simulated transaction simulating the incident, communicate a clone of one of the associated business objects to the support software.

17. The software of claim 16, the request communicated via an exposed interface in the respective business object.

18. The software of claim 16 further operable to implement a patch identified based, at least in part, on the transmitted information.

19. The software of claim 16 communicably coupled to the support software via a local plug-in.

20. The software of claim 16, the transmitted information comprising Extensible Markup Language (XML).

21. The software of claim 16 executing on a server unaffiliated with a provider of the support software.