Health check monitoring process

• US 7,979,733 B2
• Filed: 12/30/2005
• Issued: 07/12/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 12/30/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: SAP SE
• Original Assignee: SAP AG (SAP SE)
• Inventors: Schneider, Thomas, Bai, Xue, Erdtmann, Uwe, Krimmel, Stefan, Downham, Lee, Kloeffer, Michael, Wang, Chongyao
• Primary Examiner(s): Baderman; Scott T
• Assistant Examiner(s): KO, CHAE M
• Application Number:
  US11/322,890
• Publication Number:
  US 20070174716A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,020 Days
• Field of Search: 714/39, 714/25, 714/37, 714/26, 714/48, 706/45, 706/47
• US Class Current: N/A
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0709 in a distributed system consisting of a plurality of standalone computer nodes, e.g. clusters, client-server systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0715 in a system implementing multitasking multitasking per se G06F9/46
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/327 Alarm or error message display

Abstract

A health check monitoring process embedded in a client system provides automation of monitoring processes of system and application components and creates and pushes incidents and/or administration tasks to a user or user interface if a critical situation or event, such as a monitored status of a component exceeds a predetermined threshold value or state, is detected. The creation of an incident includes automatically collecting context data associated with the event, generating a incident report associated with the collected diagnostic data and generating an incident service request based on the incident report. The context data may include technical and application information that is usually required to resolve the incident. The user interface includes various views depicting different levels of information related to the service request, such as an incident work list, details of a particular incident and details of the context data associated with an incident.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method of managing a system, the method comprising:

selectively receiving at least one generated event, each generated event indicating a change in an operational parameter of one of a plurality of components of the system, each generated event being received if the event triggers at least one predetermined logical rule, the predetermined logical rule comprising an error severity threshold, wherein the error severity threshold comprises a frequency of the event received within a previous predetermined time duration and a severity of the event at a time instance;

storing the at least one generated event in a system configuration data store;

determining, for each received event, whether the received event has an associated predefined task, the predefined task comprising a periodic maintenance procedure to be performed on the managed system;

initiating a generation of an incident for each received event not having an associated predefined task, the incident comprising an interruption to standard operation of the managed system; and

initiating a generation of an administrative task for each received event having an associated predefined task.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the at least one predetermined logical rule comprises at least one logical operation from a group of an AND, an OR, an XOR, a NOR, a NAND, and a NOT logical operation.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein at least one of the at least one predetermined logical rule is an error severity threshold, wherein the error severity threshold is one of a system failure and a message failure.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein determining whether the received event has an associated predefined task comprises:

retrieving a plurality of predefined events, each predefined event associated with at least one predefined task needed to resolve the associated predefined event;

determining, for each received event, whether the received event is a predefined event; and

associating, for each received event, the at least one predefined task with the received event that is a predefined event.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein initiating a generation of an incident for each received event not having an associated predefined task comprises:

automatically collecting context data associated with each received event;

generating, for each received event, an incident report based on the collected context data; and

generating, for each incident report, an incident service request based on the generated incident report.

6. The computer implemented method of claim 5, wherein initiating a generation of an incident for each received event not having an associated predefined task further comprises:

automatically storing the collected context data; and

associating the generated incident service request with the stored context data.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 6, further comprising displaying the generated incident service request in at least one view of a graphical user interface.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein selectively receiving at least one generated event, each generated event indicating a change in an operational parameter of one of a plurality of components of the system, each generated event being received if the event triggers at least one predetermined logical rule, when initiated by an activating signal generated based on a predetermined time schedule.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein selectively receiving at least one generated event, each generated event indicating a change in an operational parameter of one of a plurality of components of the system, each generated event being received if the event triggers at least one predetermined logical rule comprises:

monitoring a plurality of operational parameters of a plurality of components of the system;

detecting a change of at least one operational parameter;

generating an event for each detected change; and

retrieving each stored event from the system configuration data store upon generation of an activating signal if the stored event triggers at least one predetermined logical rule.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of components of the system comprises:

at least one application software module, wherein at least one software module is one of a customer relation management module, a supplier relation management module, a financial management module, a supply chain management module, a human capital management module and a project management module.

20. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the predetermined logical rules comprise a first set of rules and a second set of rules, and wherein selectively receiving at least one generated event comprises:

determining whether the event triggers a rule in the first set of rules in a high-throughput pass; and

if the event triggers a rule in the first set of rules, determining whether the event triggers a rule in the second set of rules in a second more detailed pass.

11. A computer-implemented method of providing system initiated service requests, the method comprising:

receiving at least one generated event in response to a system-generated activating signal, each generated event indicating a change in a monitored operational parameter of one of a plurality of components of a system, each generated event being received if the event triggers at least one predetermined logical rule comprising an error severity threshold, wherein the error severity threshold comprises a frequency of the event received within a previous predetermined time duration and a severity of the event at a time instance;

storing the at least one generated event in a system configuration data store;

automatically collecting diagnostic data associated with each generated event in response to the particular event, wherein the diagnostic data is substantially all data that is needed to resolve the generated event;

generating an incident report, in response to the particular event, based on the collected diagnostic data, the incident report describing an incident comprising an interruption to standard operation of the system;

generating an incident service request for each incident report; and

associating the collected diagnostic data with the generated incident service request.

12. The computer-implemented method of claim 11, wherein generating an incident report, for each generated event, based on the collected diagnostic data comprises:

receiving the collected diagnostic data associated with the generated event;

providing a description of the generated event in a message based on the received diagnostic data; and

attaching the received diagnostic data to the message.

13. The computer-implemented method of claim 11, further comprising displaying each generated incident service request in at least one view of a graphical user interface, wherein at least one view provides the collected diagnostic data associated with the generated incident service request.

14. The computer-implemented method of claim 13, wherein at least one view provides a list of generated incident service requests.

15. The computer-implemented method of claim 11, wherein receiving at least one generated event in response to a system generated activating signal, each generated event indicating a change in a monitored operational parameter of one of a plurality of components comprises:

monitoring a plurality of operational parameters of a plurality of components of the system;

detecting a change of at least one operational parameter;

generating an event for each detected change; and

retrieving each stored event from the configuration data store upon generation of an activating signal.

16. The computer-implemented method of claim 15, wherein the plurality of components of the system comprises at least one application software module, wherein at least one software module is one of a customer relation management module, a supplier relation management module, a financial management module, a supply chain management module, a human capital management module and a project management module.

17. A computer-implemented method of automatically generating service requests, the method comprising:

receiving at least one generated event, each generated event indicating a change in a monitored operational parameter of one of a plurality of components;

storing the at least one generated event in a system configuration data store;

classifying a received event as an incident when at least one of a plurality of predefined logical rules is satisfied based at least in part upon whether at least one predefined task is associated with resolving the received event, the incident comprising an interruption to standard operation of at least one of the plurality of components, the predetermined logical rule comprising an error severity threshold, wherein the error severity threshold comprises a frequency of the event received within a previous predetermined time duration and a severity of the event at a time instance;

automatically collecting context data for each classified event in response to the particular event;

generating, for each classified event, a problem report, wherein the problem report includes a description of the classified event; and

generating an incident service request, for each classified event, including the description of the classified event from the corresponding problem report.

18. The computer-implemented method of claim 17, further comprising displaying each generated incident service request in at least one view of a graphical user interface, wherein at least one view provides the collected diagnostic data.

19. The computer-implemented method of claim 17, wherein classifying a received event as an incident when at least one of a plurality of predefined logical rules is satisfied comprises:

selecting at least one of the received events based on a plurality of predetermined rules;

determining, for each selected event, whether the selected event has an associated predefined task; and

initiating a generation of an incident for each selected event not having an associated predefined task.