Use of attribution to describe management information

• US 7,765,540 B2
• Filed: 10/23/2003
• Issued: 07/27/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 10/23/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: ServiceNow Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Feuerstein, Corina E., McCollum, Raymond W., Reistad, Brian, Hewardt, Mario
• Primary Examiner(s): Dam; Tuan Q
• Assistant Examiner(s): DAO, THUY CHAN
• Application Number:
  US10/692,432
• Publication Number:
  US 20050091635A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,469 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 717/174
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/20 Software design

Abstract

A system that facilitates management of an application or service of a system using code attribution. Code of an application or service to be installed on the system is attributed with management information. The system includes a management subsystem that uses the attributed management information to manage the installed application or service.

Claims

1. A method of managing an application or service, comprising:

receiving the application or service for installation on a system;

attributing selected parts of code of the application or service with management information, wherein attribution allows a system user to specify rules in the management information that identify one or more system health criteria that are to be met for the system to be considered healthy, the system health criteria indicating a plurality of different health states including intermediate health states that indicate a partially healthy or partially unhealthy system, the management information being identified within the attributed application or service using a uniform resource identifier, wherein the uniform resource identifier includes documentation falling into categories;

text description, a browser compatible help-link, parameter documentation, and a set of tags;

exposing the management information to a management system;

controlling the application or service based upon the management information that is exposed when the application or service is installed on the system; and

generating a manifest based on the exposed management information.

2. The method of claim 1, the management information is exposed from one or more internal processes of a provider.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising generating a catalog of all manifests of all available instrumentation data of the system, wherein the catalog is browsed and used to discover a particular instrumentation point.

4. The method of claim 1, the service is a native service whose code is wrapped with a managed code to facilitate attribution thereof.

5. The method of claim 1, the attributed code includes at least one of folder and probe attributes.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising authoring the application or service with management information in preparation for a runtime.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising generating an instrumentation manifest for the application or service based upon the management information.

8. The method of claim 7, the instrumentation manifest is stored with a collection of instrumentation manifests that are accessible to a consumer of the management information.

27. The system of claim 1, wherein the attributed parts of code are considered probes for use in determining health of the application.

9. A system, embodied in a computer-readable storage medium, that facilitates management of an application or service, comprising:

an application or service for installation on the system; and

an attribution component that facilitates attributing selected parts of code of the application or service with management information, the attribution component allowing a system user to specify rules in the management information that identify one or more system health criteria that are to be met for the system to be considered healthy, the system health criteria indicating a plurality of different health states including intermediate health states that indicate a partially healthy or partially unhealthy system, the management information is identified within the attributed application or service using a uniform resource identifier;

where the uniform resource identifier includes documentation falling into categories;

text description, a browser compatible help-link, parameter documentation, and a set of tags;

where the system uses the management information to manage the installed application or service; and

where a manifest is generated based on the management information.

10. The system of claim 9, a software tool is applied to the attributed code of the application or service to expose the management information.

11. The system of claim 9, the management information is exposed and used to generate a manifest.

12. The system of claim 9, the attributed code of the application or service indicates at least one subset of types within one or more components of the application or service that should be exposed and how the subset of types should be identified.

13. The system of claim 9, the management information is exposed from at least one of an in-process provider and a decoupled provider.

14. The system of claim 9, the management information is exposed from a decoupled provider, which attributed code of the decoupled provider includes at least one of a register call at startup and an unregister call at shutdown.

15. The system of claim 9, a catalog is created of all available instrumentation data of the system, wherein the catalog is browsed and used to discover a particular instrumentation point.

16. The system of claim 9, at runtime, management information is retrieved by identifying the associated management information within a catalog of all management information of the system, and following the associated management information to the corresponding application or service.

17. The system of claim 16, for an in-process provider at runtime, the component associated with the management information, is loaded and invoked.

18. The system of claim 16, for a decoupled provider at runtime, the management information is used with information provided by a register call to locate a corresponding running process, to connect to the running process, and to locate a subcomponent within the running process that is associated with the management information.

19. The system of claim 9, the management information includes a probe attribute that is used to indicate that a member of a type is a probe.

20. The system of claim 19, the type is decorated with a folder attribute.

21. The system of claim 9, the management information includes health information that is exposed from an in-process provider.

22. The system of claim 9, the management information includes health information that indicates health of the application or service.

23. The system of claim 9, the management information includes execution information that indicates when the management information should be executed.

24. The system of claim 9, the management information is exposed from a data source that includes at least one of hardware, software application, and an operating system.

25. The system of claim 9, the management information includes class definitions that are exposed to a management component.

26. The system of claim 25, the class definitions are described in a managed object format.

28. A distributed system, embodied in a computer-readable storage medium, for managing an application or service, comprising:

means for attributing selected parts of code of the application or service with health information for the distributed system, the health information including an indication of the health of a local computer system as well as any relationships between the local computer system and one or more remote computer systems, the attributing means allowing the system user to specify rules that identify one or more system health criteria in the management information that are to be met for the system to be considered healthy, the system health criteria indicating a plurality of different health states including intermediate health states that indicate a partially healthy or partially unhealthy system, the management information being identified within the attributed application or service using a uniform resource identifier, wherein the uniform resource identifier includes documentation falling into categories;

text description, a browser compatible help-link, parameter documentation, and a set of tags, and further allowing the system user to specify when the rules are to be executed by the system;

means for identifying the health information with a unique identifier;

means for exposing the health information in the form of instrumentation definitions;

means for cataloging the instrumentation definitions in a collection of instrumentation definitions;

means for controlling the application or service based upon the exposed instrumentation definitions when the application or service is installed on the system; and

means for generating a manifest based on the exposed health information, wherein the manifest generating means further allows the system user to create a customized version of the manifest to override any manufacturer-provided manifests.

29. A computer-readable storage medium having computer-executable instructions for performing a method for managing an application or service, the method comprising:

receiving the application or service for installation on a system;

attributing selected parts of code of the application or service with management information, wherein attribution allows a system user to specify rules in the management information that identify one or more system health criteria that are to be met for the system to be considered healthy, the system health criteria indicating a plurality of different health states including intermediate health states that indicate a partially healthy or partially unhealthy system, the management information being identified within the attributed application or service using a uniform resource identifier, wherein the uniform resource identifier includes documentation falling into categories;

text description, a browser compatible help-link, parameter documentation, and a set of tags;

exposing the management information to a management system;

controlling the application or service based upon the management information that is exposed when the application or service is installed on the system; and

generating a manifest based on the exposed management information.

30. A computer-readable storage medium having computer-executable instructions that facilitates a system for managing an application or service, the system comprising:

an application or service for installation on the system; and

an attribution component that facilitates attributing selected parts of code of the application or service with management information, the attribution component allowing a system user to specify rules in the management information that identify one or more system health criteria that are to be met for the system to be considered healthy, the system health criteria indicating a plurality of different health states including intermediate health states that indicate a partially healthy or partially unhealthy system, the management information is identified within the attributed application or service using a uniform resource identifier, wherein the uniform resource identifier includes documentation falling into categories;

text description, a browser compatible help-link, parameter documentation, and a set of tags;

wherein the management information is exposed and used to generate a manifest;

wherein the system uses the management information to manage the installed application or service.

31. The computer-readable medium of claim 30, the management information includes a probe attribute that is used to indicate that a member of a type is a probe, which type is decorated with a folder attribute.

32. The computer-readable medium of claim 30, at runtime, a component of an in-process provider associated with the management information is loaded and invoked, and the management information for a decoupled provider is used with information provided by a register call to locate a corresponding running process, to connect to the running process, and to locate a subcomponent within the running process that is associated with the management information.