Objective assessment of application crashes from a customer environment

• US 7,954,008 B2
• Filed: 01/15/2007
• Issued: 05/31/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 01/15/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Papatla, Ram P., Mahajan, Dhananjay Madhusudan, Ellis, John Leo
• Primary Examiner(s): Baderman; Scott T
• Assistant Examiner(s): SCHELL, JOSEPH O
• Application Number:
  US11/623,267
• Publication Number:
  US 20080172583A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,597 Days
• Field of Search: 714/26, 714/37, 714/38, 714/46, 714/47, 714/45, 714/48, 714/57
• US Class Current: N/A
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0766 Error or fault reporting or storing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3672 Test management

Abstract

A computerized method for collecting error data and providing error reports relating to occurrences of errors of software applications installed on one or more computing devices is disclosed. Data for describing software applications and identifying software application errors is collected from the computing devices and stored in a catalog. Data associated with error occurrences is obtained and combined with related data being stored in the catalog. A report is generated based on the error occurrences and related catalog data.

Claims

1. A computerized method for collecting error data and providing error reports relating to occurrences of errors of software applications installed on a group of computing devices, said computerized method comprising:

obtaining for each of a plurality of software application products, files names of files belonging to the software application product, wherein said plurality of software application products include the installed software applications;

collecting for each of the plurality of software application products, descriptive information corresponding thereto, said descriptive information including a product name of the corresponding software application product;

storing the identified file names and the collected descriptive information in a catalog, wherein the catalog cross references, for each software application product, the obtained file names of files belonging to the software application product with the descriptive information corresponding to said software application product;

obtaining error data responsive to an occurrence of an error in a particular one of the installed software applications, said error data including a file name of a file belonging to the particular one of the installed software applications that is associated with the occurrence of the error in said particular one of the installed software applications;

identifying from the error data, the file name of the file belonging to the particular one of the installed software applications that is associated with the occurrence of the error in said particular one of the installed software applications;

recording the occurrence of the error, wherein said recording includes adding the occurrence of the error to the descriptive information that is cross referenced in the catalog to the identified file name, said descriptive information including the product name of the software application product in which the error occurred;

computing, for the software application product in which the error occurred, a total number of error occurrences recorded from all of the computing devices in the group of computing devices for said software application product; and

generating an error report for the computing device on which the error occurred, said error report having the descriptive information that is cross referenced in the catalog to the identified file name, wherein said descriptive information includes the product name of the software application product in which the error occurred and the computed total number of error occurrences for the software application product.

2. The computerized method of claim 1 further comprising searching for a solution associated with the identified file name and wherein the error report is further based on results of said search.

3. The computerized method of claim 2 further comprising

searching periodically for a solution associated with identified file name until a solution is identified;

generating another error report indicating the identified solution.

4. The computerized method of claim 1 wherein the descriptive information further includes solutions for errors occurring in the corresponding software application product.

5. The computerized method of claim 1 further comprising acquiring additional descriptive information in the catalog cross referenced to an existing file name in the catalog.

6. The computerized method of claim 5 further comprising

determining whether the existing file name has been included in the obtained error data;

and

generating an other error report having the acquired additional descriptive information that is cross referenced in the catalog to the existing file name, when said existing file name is determined to have been included in the obtained error data.

7. The computerized method of claim 1 wherein the error report compares recorded occurrences of an error in a software application installed on a first group of computing devices with recorded occurrences of the error in the software application installed on a second group of computing devices, wherein said first and second groups are based on an environment associated with the computing devices.

8. The computerized method of claim 1, wherein one or more tangible computer-readable media store computer-executable instructions for performing the method of claim 1.