On-line service/application monitoring and reporting system

• US 7,457,872 B2
• Filed: 01/31/2005
• Issued: 11/25/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 10/15/2003
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Beish, Phillip I., Aton, Todd R.
• Primary Examiner(s): VU, VIET DUY
• Application Number:
  US11/047,317
• Publication Number:
  US 20050138111A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,394 Days
• Field of Search: 709/217, 709/219, 709/223, 709/224, 709/226, 719/318, 719/319
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3476 Data logging G06F11/14, G06F11/2205 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3495 for systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/81 Threshold
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/86 Event-based monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/865 Monitoring of software
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/88 Monitoring involving counting

Abstract

An event monitoring and logging system, including apparatuses and methods, for instrumenting an on-line application program, or service, for generating and communicating events upon the occurrence of certain conditions during the execution thereof, for monitoring generated events in real and near-real time in accordance with configurable rules, for generating and communicating selected alerts to appropriate personnel upon the exceeding of configurable thresholds, for logging generated events and related information in data files and databases for subsequent analysis, and for producing reports related to such instrumentation and generated events.

Claims

1. A system for monitoring and logging events generated during the execution of an on-line service application, the system comprising:

a computer operable to execute an on-line service application;

an event generator program residing on the computer, the event generator software program operable to;

generate critical events associated with a category and severity, wherein prior to generating the critical event, a severity parameter value in a call is compared to a value in a throttle mapping table for a category value in a category parameter;

generate trace events associated with a category and level;

generate exception events; and

generate ship assert events, the event generator program providing data and information representative of the performance of the on-line service application during execution thereof by the computer; and

an administrator interface operable to allow an administrator to throttle a number of critical events generated based on category and severity.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the administrator interface is operable to allow the administrator to throttle a number of trace events generated based on category and level.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the event generator program is operable to compare a level parameter value in a call with a level value in a throttle mapping table for a category value in a category parameter before generating a trace event.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein critical events are associated with severities including service unavailable, security breach, critical error, error, warning, failure audit, success audit, and information.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein trace events are associated with levels including critical, exception, assert, unexpected, monitorable, high, medium, verbose, and extreme.

6. The system of claim 1 wherein the event generator program includes functionality to forward event logs to a corporate error reporting computer or error reporting computer.

7. A computer storage medium having computer executable instructions when executed perform a method for executing an on-line service application, the method comprising:

generating critical events associated with a category and severity;

generating trace events associated with a category and level, wherein prior to generating the trace events, a level parameter value in a call is compared to a level value in a throttle mapping table for a category value in a category parameter;

providing data and information representative of the performance of the on-line service application;

monitoring and logging events; and

throttling a number of generated critical events and trace events, wherein the number of critical events are throttled based on a category and severity and the number of trace events are throttled based on a category and level.

8. The computer storage medium of claim 7, wherein the method further comprises associating the critical events with severities including service unavailable, security breach, critical error, error, warning, failure audit, success audit, and information.

9. The computer storage medium of claim 7, wherein the method further comprises forwarding events to an corporate error reporting computer or error reporting computer.

10. The computer storage medium of claim 8, wherein the method further comprises generating alerts in response to threshold criteria being exceeded by certain events.

16. The computer storage medium of claim 7, wherein the method further comprises comparing a severity parameter value in a call to a value in a throttle mapping table for a category value in a category parameter before generating a critical event.

11. A method of executing an on-line service application, the method comprising:

generating events associated with a category, the events comprising critical events that are associated with a category and severity, wherein prior to generating the critical events, a severity parameter value in a call is compared to a value in a throttle mapping table for a category value in a category parameter;

throttling a number of generated events, wherein a number of critical events are throttled based on the category and severity; and

monitoring and logging the events.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising associating events with severities including service unavailable, security breach, critical error, error, warning, failure audit, success audit, and information.

13. The method of claim 11, further comprising associating trace events with a level and category.

14. The method of claim 11, further comprising throttling a number of trace events generated based on category and level.

15. The method of claim 11, further comprising forwarding events to a corporate error reporting computer or error reporting computer.

17. The method of claim 14, further comprising comparing a level parameter value in a call with a level value in a throttle mapping table for a category value in a category parameter before generating a trace event.