SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS OF INFORMATION RELATING TO MOBILE APPLICATIONS

• US 20130152050A1
• Filed: 12/12/2011
• Published: 06/13/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 12/12/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Jeffrey H. Seibert Jr
• Inventors: Chang, Wayne, Seibert, Jeffrey H. Jr.
• Granted Patent: US 9,262,250 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/125
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0742 in a data processing system embedded in a mobile device, e.g. mobile phones, handheld devices
• 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 11/0778 Dumping, i.e. gathering error/state information after a fault for later diagnosis
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0784 Routing of error reports, e.g. with a specific transmission path or data flow
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3688 for test execution, e.g. scheduling of test suites
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/70 Software maintenance or management

Abstract

A system and method are provided for data collection and analysis of information related to applications. Specifically, the developer of the application may install analytic software, which may be embodied as a software development kit (SDK), on an integrated development environment (“IDE”) associated with the developer, wherein the analytic software may be installed with a wizard-like interface having a series of easy to follow instructions. Once installed, the application, with the analytic software incorporated therein, may be provided and installed on a plurality of end user devices. Thereafter, the analytic software may work in conjunction with analytic processing logic to assist the developer in obtaining pertinent information related to bugs associated with the application that is being executed on an end user device.

Claims

1. A method for analyzing information relating to mobile applications, comprising:

receiving, at a server having a processor and a memory, debugging information from a computing device;

receiving, at the server, crash data associated with an application that incurred a bug while executing on an end user device;

extracting an identifier from the received crash data to identify a debugging data structure associated with the debugging information; and

performing, at the server, analytic processing on the crash data utilizing the debugging data structure to convert the crash data into results, wherein the results identify information associated with the bug that occurred while the end user device executed the application.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the computing device executes an integrated development environment (IDE).

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the debugging information comprises a dSYM file.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

installing analytic software on the computing device that is associated with a developer of the application and installing the analytic software within the application, utilizing one or more graphical user interfaces (GUIs), wherein the analytic software assists in obtaining the information associated with the bug that occurred while the end user device executed the application.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the analytic software is a software development kit (SDK).

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the end user device is selected from a group consisting of a mobile phone, a personal digital assistant (PDA), and a personal computer (PC).

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

sending a notification to the computing device that results from the analytic processing are available at the server.

8. The method of claim 4, wherein installing the analytic software further comprises:

launching analytic installer;

selecting an application;

integrating an analytic module;

installing an analytic library on the application;

installing analytic source code in the application;

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining whether there are cached setting regarding crash detection and reporting on the end user device;

in response to determining that there are no cached settings with respect to crash detection and reporting on the end user device, receiving a request at the server to obtain settings regarding crash detection and reporting on the end user device; and

in response to determining that there are cached setting with respect to crash detection and reporting on the end user device, obtain the cached settings regarding crash detection and reporting on the end user device from the end user device;

10. The method of claim 9, further comprising:

storing the crash data on the end user device and preventing the crash data from being transmitted from the end user device to the server if the settings regarding crash detection and reporting on the end user device are disenabled.

11. The method of claim 9, further comprising:

storing the crash data on the end user device and preventing the crash data from being transmitted from the end user device to the server if the cached settings regarding crash detection and reporting on the end user device indicate are disenabled.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the debugging information is received utilizing Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) messages.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the debugging information is stored on a storage device coupled to the server.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein the crash data is received utilizing Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) messages.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein the crash data is stored on a storage device coupled to the server.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein the server is coupled to database and the server sends identification information associated with the computing device to the database for storage.

17. The method of claim 16 wherein the identification information is sent from the server to the database in the form of one or more mongoDB messages.

18. The method of claim 2, wherein the IDE comprises an Xcode environment.

19. The method of claim 1, wherein performing analytic processing further comprises performing symbolication that includes replacing memory addresses from the crash data with function names, filenames, and line number information associated with the debugging data structure.

21. The server of claim 1, the analytic processing further comprises:

The processor further configured to perform symbolication that includes replacing memory addresses from the crash data with function names, filenames, and line number information associated with the debugging data structure.

20. A server, comprising:

a processor, a memory, and one or more network interfaces;

the one or more network interfaces configured to receive information associated with a computing device, wherein the information is identification information if the computing device chooses peer-to-peer analysis and the information is debugging information if the computing device chooses hosted system analysis;

the one or more network interfaces further configured to receive crash data associated with an application that incurred a bug on the end user device;

the processor to extract an identifier from the crash data to identify a debugging data structure associated with the application;

the processor further configured to perform analytic processing on the crash data, if the computing device chose the hosted system analysis, utilizing the debugging data structure to convert the crash data into results, wherein the results identify information associated with the bug that occurred while the end user device executed the application; and

the processor to send a notification to the computing device that analytic processing has to be performed on the crash data if the computing device chose peer-to-peer analysis.