METHOD FOR THE COMPUTER-AIDED DETERMINATION OF THE DEPENDENCIES OF A PLURARITY OF MODULES OF A TECHNICAL SYSTEM, ESPECIALLY OF A SOFTWARE SYSTEM

• US 20100088663A1
• Filed: 03/05/2008
• Published: 04/08/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 03/20/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Siemens AG
• Original Assignee: Siemens AG
• Inventors: Mangold, Florian, Majewski, Kurt, Hammer, Moritz, Moll, Christoph, Wasgint, Rainer, Rölle, Harald
• Granted Patent: US 8,561,020 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/101
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/71 Version control security arrangements therefor G06F21/57; Configuration management

Abstract

An embodiment of the present invention discloses a method for the computer-aided determination of the dependencies of a plurality of modules of a technical system, especially of a software system. Every module of the system has a known, first consumption of resources. The first consumption of resources of at least one of the modules is modified according to a predetermined criterion, thereby obtaining a modified system. The modified system is executed. A second consumption of resources is measured for every module of the modified system, the consumption resulting from the modification of the first consumption of resources of the at least one module. An analysis of the second consumption of resources of a respective module and the predetermined criterion is used to determine whether there is a dependency between the respective module and the at least one module that is characterized by the modified consumption of resources.

Claims

1. A method for computer-aided determination of dependencies of a plurality of modules of a technical system, with each of the modules of the system having a known, first resource consumption, the method comprising:

modifying the first resource consumption of at least one of the modules according to a criterion, resulting in a modified system;

executing the modified system;

measuring a second resource consumption for each of the modules of the modified system, the second resource consumption resulting from the modification of the first resource consumption of the at least one module; and

using an analysis of the second resource consumption of a respective module and the criterion to determine whether there is a dependency between the respective module and the at least one module with modified resource consumption.

2. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the modification of the first resource consumption of the at least one module is an increase in the first resource consumption.

3. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the second resource consumption is a runtime of the relevant module.

4. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the first resource consumption of Just one of the modules is modified.

5. The method as claimed in claim 4, wherein the criterion is an arbitrary factor taking into account the possible measurement accuracy when measuring the second resource consumption.

6. The method as claimed in claim 4, wherein the method is repeated according to the number of modules in the system, with the first resource consumption of a different module being modified with each repetition, so that each module of the system undergoes a modification just once.

7. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the respective first resource consumption of each of the modules of the system is modified according to a criterion.

8. The method as claimed in claim 7, wherein the respective first resource consumption of each of the modules of the system is modified in a unique and different manner.

9. The method as claimed in claim 8, wherein the criterion is the logarithm of a prime number.

10. The method as claimed in claim 7, wherein the difference between the first and second resource consumption of a respective module is determined and a prime factor decomposition of the exponentiated differences is carried out.

11. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein resource consumption is modified using aspect-oriented programming.

12. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein a directed graph is created from the dependencies obtained.

13. The method as claimed in claim 12, wherein the modules of the system are determined for which the second resource consumption of the relevant module results exclusively from the first resource consumption of the module and the modification undertaken according to the criterion.

14. The method as claimed in claim 13, wherein the modules of the system represent nodes of the graph, between which edges run when there is a dependency between two modules, with edges being provided with a weighting factor, which reflects the degree of dependency between two modules.

15. A computer program product, loadable directly into the internal memory of a digital computer, comprising software code segments, useable to execute the steps according to claim 1, when the product operates on a computer.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein the method is for computer-aided determination of dependencies of a plurality of modules of a software system.

17. The method as claimed in claim 2, wherein the second resource consumption is a runtime of the relevant module.

18. The method as claimed in claim 5, wherein the method is repeated according to the number of modules in the system, with the first resource consumption of a different module being modified with each repetition, so that each module of the system undergoes a modification just once.

19. The method as claimed in claim 8, wherein the difference between the first and second resource consumption of a respective module is determined and a prime factor decomposition of the exponentiated differences is carried out.

20. A computer readable medium including program segments for, when executed on a computer device, causing the computer device to implement the method of claim 1.