Methods and Computer Program Products for Transaction Relationships Between Application Servers

• US 20140280894A1
• Filed: 03/15/2013
• Published: 09/18/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 03/15/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Reynolds, Patrick Alexander, Bley, John Branson, Irwin, David William, Yumerefendi, Aydan R., Nethercutt, Glenn Thomas
• Granted Patent: US 9,154,397 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/142 using statistical or mathematical methods
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5009 Determining service level performance parameters or violations of service level contracts, e.g. violations of agreed response time or mean time between failures [MTBF]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/00 Arrangements for monitoring or testing data switching networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/04 Processing captured monitoring data, e.g. for logfile generation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/062 related to network traffic
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/0876 Network utilisation, e.g. volume of load or congestion level
• CPC Class Codes: Y04S 40/00 Systems for electrical power generation, transmission, distribution or end-user application management characterised by the use of communication or information technologies, or communication or information technology specific aspects supporting them

Abstract

Provided are methods and computer program products for analyzing transactions across a network and to help identify network performance issues. Methods for analyzing traffic include identifying an outbound transaction and a related transaction type, and identifying candidate inbound transactions that have the same transaction type as the transaction type of the outbound transaction. One or more transaction data parameters may be selected that correspond to the outbound or inbound transactions. Candidate transactions may be determined to be related to the outbound transaction based on one or more transaction data parameters.

Claims

1. A method of analyzing network traffic comprising:

identifying an outbound transaction;

identifying a transaction type of the outbound transaction;

identifying one or more inbound transactions as candidate transactions, wherein the one or more candidate transactions have a same transaction type as the transaction type of the outbound transaction; and

selecting one or more transaction data parameters that correspond to the outbound and/or inbound transactions,

wherein a candidate transaction is determined to be related to the outbound transaction based on the one or more transaction data parameters.

2. The method of analyzing network traffic of claim 1, wherein identifying the one or more inbound transactions as candidate transactions comprises:

identifying one or more inbound transactions occurring in a given time window.

3. The method of analyzing network traffic of claim 1, wherein selecting the one or more transaction data parameters comprises:

identifying a transaction identifier as one of the transaction data parameters.

4. The method of analyzing network traffic of claim 1, wherein selecting the one or more transaction data parameters comprises:

identifying an error code and/or a return code as one of the transaction data parameters.

5. The method of analyzing network traffic of claim 1, wherein selecting the one or more transaction data parameters comprises:

identifying a port number and/or a sequence number as one of the transaction data parameters.

6. The method of analyzing network traffic of claim 5, wherein the sequence number is determined based on a byte offset of a TCP stream.

7. The method of analyzing network traffic of claim 1, wherein the one or more transaction data parameters includes a protocol specific identifier.

8. The method of analyzing network traffic of claim 7, wherein the protocol specific identifier comprises a header.

9. The method of analyzing network traffic of claim 8,

wherein the header is a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request header.

10. The method of analyzing network traffic of claim 8, further comprising:

generating a non-reversible checksum of at least a portion of the header.

11. The method of analyzing network traffic of claim 10, wherein generating the non-reversible checksum of the header comprises:

generating a checksum of one or more non-contiguous portions of at least a portion of the header.

12. The method of analyzing network traffic of claim 1, wherein the protocol specific identifier comprises a query string.

13. The method of analyzing network traffic of claim 12, further comprising:

generating a non-reversible checksum of at least a portion the query string.

14. The method of analyzing network traffic of claim 13, wherein generating the non-reversible checksum of the query string comprises:

generating a checksum of one or more non-contiguous portions of at least a portion of the query string.

17. A computer program product, the computer program product comprising a computer usable storage medium having computer-readable program code embodied in the medium, the computer readable program code configured to perform the method of claim 1.

15. A method of analyzing network traffic comprising:

identifying a transaction type for analysis of one or more application servers;

identifying a plurality of outbound transactions of the transaction type identified for analysis;

identifying a plurality of inbound transactions of the transaction type identified for analysis; and

aggregating information associated with the plurality of outbound transactions and information associated with the plurality of inbound transactions of a same transaction type.

16. The method of analyzing network traffic of claim 15, wherein identifying the plurality of inbound transactions comprises:

identifying a protocol and/or a port number associated with each of the plurality of outbound transactions from a web or an application server; and

identifying a plurality of related inbound transactions for one or more different web or application servers that are based on the protocol and/or the port number associated with the plurality of outbound transactions.

18. A computer program product, the computer program product comprising a computer usable storage medium having computer-readable program code embodied in the medium, the computer readable program code configured to perform the method of claim 15.