AUTOMATIC INCREMENTAL APPLICATION DEPENDENCY DISCOVERY THROUGH CODE INSTRUMENTATION

• US 20100037211A1
• Filed: 07/15/2009
• Published: 02/11/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 07/15/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: A Vicode Incorporated
• Inventors: Mushkatin, Victor, Zakonov, Alex
• Granted Patent: US 9,104,794 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/130
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3604 Software analysis for verifying properties of programs byte-code verification G06F9/44589

Abstract

Disclosed is a method allowing the automatic discovery of application component dependencies by tracing application calls to dependant resources. The call tracing is embedded dynamically in an application at runtime using Common Intermediate Language (“CIL”) code instrumentation at compile time or runtime. Such a method reads an instrumentation configuration file to determine an address extraction code portion that is to be instrumented to an application method code, locates the CIL method body for the application method that is to be instrumented, instruments the application method by inserting the address extraction code portion into the appropriate .NET Application or .NET library at either compile time or at run time, extracts the address of one or more external service providers from the designated .NET library methods responsible for communication during execution of the application method that was instrumented, publishes any newly discovered dependencies to a management system in the form of the discovery event, and causes the management system to build an application dependency map based on the resource address information obtained.

Claims

1. A computer implemented method for automatically mapping application dependencies in a distributed application, comprising:

loading an instrumentation configuration to identify one or more computer programs that are configured to implement methods that require code instrumentation in order to provide automatic mapping of application dependencies;

locating Common Intermediate Language method body suitable for extracting address information from said one or more computer programs, wherein said address information further comprises an electronic address of external service providers to said one or more computer programs;

inserting an instruction into said one or more computer programs for extracting said address information from said one or more computer programs;

extracting said address information from said one or more computer programs; and

using said extracted address information to build an application dependency map.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said reading step further comprises:

identifying at least one of an application class and an application method that is to be instrumented; and

determining an address extraction code that is to be inserted into the method being instrumented.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein said inserting step further comprises inserting a call to said Common Intermediate Language method body.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein said inserting step further comprises inserting said Common Intermediate Language method body into said one or more computer programs.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein said reading step and said locating step are carried out at a time of compiling said one or more computer programs.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising the step of reading metadata for an assembly file for said one or more computer programs to determine a location of method body code within the assembly that is to be instrumented.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein said reading step and said locating step are carried out at a time of running said one or more computer programs.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising the step of receiving a function identification from a Just In Time compilation callback of a .NET profiling API, wherein said function identification uniquely identifies a function within said one or more computer programs that is to be instrumented.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of inserting analysis code into said one or more computer programs, wherein said analysis code further comprises executable computer instructions for comparing an address value extracted by said instruction with a list of address for previously discovered application dependencies.

10. The method of claim 9, further comprising the step of comparing extracted address information with a list of previously discovered dependencies to determine whether a dependency already exists.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising the step of discarding newly obtained address information if said comparing step determines that a dependency already exists.

12. The method of claim 10, further comprising the step of adding newly obtained address information to a list of discovered dependencies if said comparing step determines that a dependency does not already exist.