Incident simulation support environment and business objects associated with the incident

• US 8,234,633 B2
• Filed: 01/09/2008
• Issued: 07/31/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 01/09/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: SAP SE
• Original Assignee: SAP AG (SAP SE)
• Inventors: Schneider, Thomas, Sattler, Juergen, Haeberle, Tilmann
• Primary Examiner(s): Khatri, Anil
• Application Number:
  US11/971,409
• Publication Number:
  US 20090177926A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,665 Days
• Field of Search: 717120-138, 707/609
• US Class Current: 717/135
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/2294 by remote test

Abstract

This disclosure describes software for supporting an application. In one aspect, software for supporting a business application receives error and dynamic context information from a remote business application in response to an incident. The dynamic context information at least partially identifies one or more business objects (BOs) associated with the incident. The software is further operable to clone at least one of the BOs associated with the incident. The software can then start a transaction simulating the incident. Conversely, the business application (or other supported software) can transmit error and dynamic context information to support software related to an incident within having a particular execution environment. In response to an automated request from the support software executing a simulated transaction simulating the incident, the supported software communicates a clone of one of the associated BOs to the support software. Alternatively, the software re-directs service calls instead of cloning BOs.

Claims

1. An article comprising software for supporting a business application, the software comprising computer-readable instructions stored on computer-readable, non-transient media and operable when executed to:

receive error information and dynamic context information from a remote business application in response to an incident, the dynamic context information at least partially identifying a plurality of business objects associated with the incident;

clone at least one of the business objects associated with the incident;

initiate a transaction simulating at least a portion of the incident using the cloned business object; and

when requested by a support user, start a debugging session running concurrently with the transaction simulating the incident, wherein the debugging session allows a user to trace code in multiple levels of a software stack associated with the transaction simulating the incident.

2. The article of claim 1 further operable to disable a business consistency check before cloning the business object.

3. The article of claim 1 further operable to copy data that were involved in the incident, wherein the data comprises at least one of:

business configuration data, user data, organizational data, master data, and transactional data.

4. The article of claim 1, wherein cloning comprises invoking a cloning service implemented in one of the business objects.

5. The article of claim 1, wherein a portion of the cloned business object is stored in a local business object database.

6. The article of claim 1, wherein initiating the transaction comprises presenting a user interface that simulates the user interface of the remote business interface during the incident.

7. The article of claim 1, wherein initiating the transaction comprises retrieving a portion of the data associated with a cloned business object by executing business logic contained in the cloned business object.

8. The article of claim 1, wherein initiating the transaction comprises retrieving a portion of the data associated with a cloned business object by executing persistence logic.

9. An article comprising software for supporting a business application, the software comprising computer-readable instructions stored on computer-readable, non-transient media and operable when executed to:

receive error information and dynamic context information from a remote business application in response to an incident, the incident having a particular execution environment when the incident was created, the dynamic context information identifying a plurality of business objects associated with the incident, and the dynamic context information comprising information identifying aspects of the particular execution environment;

initiate a transaction simulating the incident;

redirect at least one service call to a plug-in, the plug-in parsing the dynamic context information to return data that simulate the particular execution environment; and

when requested by a support user, execute a debugging session that runs concurrently with the transaction simulating the incident, wherein the debugging session allows a user to trace code in multiple levels of a software stack associated with the transaction simulating the incident.

10. The article of claim 9 further operable to extract data from the dynamic context information that were involved in the incident, wherein the data comprises at least one of:

business configuration data, user data, organizational data, master data, and transactional data.

11. The article of claim 9 further operable to load into memory one of the business objects associated with the incident such that the business logic contained within the business objects is executed partially instead of being redirected to the plug-in.

12. The article of claim 11, wherein redirecting service calls to a plug-in comprises redirecting to plug-in-only service calls to a database layer.

13. The article of claim 9, wherein starting the transaction simulating the incident comprises starting a user interface that simulates the user interface of the remote business interface during the incident.

14. An article comprising software for supporting a business application, the software comprising computer-readable instructions stored on computer-readable, non-transient media and operable when executed to:

transmit error information and dynamic context information to support software related to an incident, the incident having a particular execution environment when the incident was created, the dynamic context information identifying a plurality of business objects associated with the incident, and the dynamic context information comprising information identifying aspects of the particular execution environment;

in response to an automated request from the support software executing a simulated transaction simulating the incident, communicate a clone of one of the associated business objects to the support software; and

when requested by a support user, execute a debugging session that runs concurrently with the simulated transaction simulating the incident, wherein the debugging session allows a user to trace code in multiple levels of a software stack associated with the transaction simulating the incident.

15. The article of claim 14, the request communicated via an exposed interface in the respective business object.

16. The article of claim 14 further operable to implement a patch identified based, at least in part, on the transmitted information.

17. The article of claim 14 communicably coupled to the support software via a local plug-in.

18. The article of claim 14, the transmitted information comprising Extensible Markup Language (XML).

19. The article of claim 14 executing on a server unaffiliated with a provider of the support software.