CHANGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM AND METHOD

• US 20130103990A1
• Filed: 10/19/2011
• Published: 04/25/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 10/19/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: CA, Inc. (d/b/a CA Technologies) (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Computer Associates Think Inc. (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: Hopper, Robin
• Granted Patent: US 8,738,966 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/49
• 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

Abstract

A method is provided for managing changes to a computer system. The method includes generating a database configured with fields identifying one or more component changes and potential problems associated with each one or more component changes; populating the fields of the database with information as a change is made to a computer system; monitoring the computer system for issuance of error alerts; comparing issued error alerts against entries of potential problems in the database; and identifying a set of at least one of the component changes as a potential cause of the issued error alert based on the result of the comparing step. The method executes a corrective process in response to the identification of the potential cause of the issued error and updates the database entry of the set of at least one of the component changes to reflect the issued error as a confirmed error thereof.

Claims

1. A method for managing changes to a computer system comprising:

generating a database configured with fields identifying one or more component changes and potential problems associated with each one or more component changes;

populating the fields of the database with information as a component change is made to a computer system;

monitoring the computer system for issuance of error alerts;

comparing issued error alerts against entries of potential problems in the database; and

identifying a set of at least one of the component changes as a potential cause of the issued error alert based on the result of the comparing step.

2. The method as in claim 1, further comprising updating the database entry of potential problems associated with each of a minimum number of component changes to reflect the issued error as a confirmed error thereof.

3. The method as in claim 1, further comprising executing a corrective process in response to the identification of the potential cause of the issued error.

4. The method as in claim 3, wherein the corrective process includes replacing the one or more component changes identified as the potential cause with previously installed versions thereof.

5. The method as in claim 3, wherein the corrective process includes an iterative process for identifying a minimum number of component changes from the set of at least one of the component changes as a confirmed cause of the issued error.

6. The method as in claim 5, wherein the iterative process replaces one of the set of at least one of the component changes with a previously installed version thereof, and monitors for a subsequent occurrence of the issued error alerts.

7. The method as in claim 6, wherein if the subsequent occurrence of the issued error alerts is detected, a next one of the set of at least one of the component changes is replaced with a previously installed version thereof.

8. The method as in claim 7, wherein the iterative process replaces each of the set of at least one of the component changes until the subsequent occurrence of the issued error alerts ceases, and identifies a last replaced component change of the set of at least one of the component changes as a confirmed cause.

9. The method as in claim 1, further comprising an updating step for identifying the potential problem corresponding to the issued error alerts as a confirmed problem of the set of at least one of the component changes.

10. The method as in claim 1, wherein the component changes entered into the database include at least changes to hardware, security privileges, software components, database entries, and settings changes.

11. A computer-readable storage device having instructions executable by a processor embodied thereon, the instructions causing the processor to perform the steps comprising:

generating a database configured with fields identifying one or more component changes and potential problems associated with each one or more component changes;

populating the fields of the database with information as a component change is made to a computer system;

monitoring the computer system for issuance of error alerts;

comparing issued error alerts against entries of potential problems in the database; and

identifying a set of at least one of the component changes as a potential cause of the issued error alert based on the result of the comparing step.

12. The computer-readable storage device as in claim 11, further comprising updating the database entry of potential problems associated with each of the minimum number of component changes to reflect the issued error as a confirmed error thereof.

13. The computer-readable storage device as in claim 11, further comprising executing a corrective process in response to the identification of the potential cause of the issued error.

14. The computer-readable storage device as in claim 13, wherein the corrective process includes replacing the one or more component changes identified as the potential cause with previously installed versions thereof.

15. The computer-readable storage device as in claim 13, wherein the corrective process includes an iterative process for identifying a minimum number of component changes from the set of at least one of the component changes as a confirmed cause of the issued error.

16. The computer-readable storage device as in claim 15, wherein the iterative process replaces one of the set of at least one of the component changes with a previously installed version thereof, and monitors for a subsequent occurrence of the issued error alerts.

17. The computer-readable storage device as in claim 15, wherein if the subsequent occurrence of the issued error alerts is detected, a next one of the set of at least one of the component changes is replaced with a previously installed version thereof.

18. The computer-readable storage device as in claim 16, wherein the iterative process replaces each of the set of at least one of the component changes until the subsequent occurrence of the issued error alerts ceases, and identifies a last replaced component change of the set of at least one of the component changes as a confirmed cause.

19. The computer-readable storage device as in claim 11, further comprising an updating step for identifying the potential problem corresponding to the issued error alerts as a confirmed problem of the set of at least one of the component changes.

20. The computer-readable storage device as in claim 11, wherein the component changes entered into the database include at least changes to hardware, security privileges, software components, database entries, and settings changes.