Generic, multi-instance method and GUI detection system for tracking and monitoring computer applications

• US 8,468,502 B2
• Filed: 11/17/2011
• Issued: 06/18/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 10/11/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: KNOA Software Incorporated
• Original Assignee: KNOA Software Incorporated
• Inventors: Lui, Philip, Kopytnik, Zbigniew, Rayna, David
• Primary Examiner(s): Dao, Thuy
• Assistant Examiner(s): Wang, Ben C
• Application Number:
  US13/299,032
• Publication Number:
  US 20120066378A1
• Time in Patent Office: 579 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 717/127
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3612 by runtime analysis performance monitoring G06F11/3466
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3636 by tracing the execution of the program

Abstract

Presented is a system and method for monitoring events derived from a computer target application presentation layer including the steps of providing, independent of recompiling the target application'"'"'s source code, a script running at a level within the target application. The script scans run-time instantiations of objects of the target application, and allocates structures in real-time to the object instantiations. These allocated structures are adapted to create a reflection of the target application structure, which is used along with detected object instantiations that match a predetermined object structure to capture a portion of an environmental spectrum of the detected object. Further, the system can process state machine events occurring on at least one of a server machine and a client/localized machine, correlate the state machine events with the environmental spectrum, and deduce a user experience based on the correlated state machine events.

Claims

1. A method for analyzing method events, comprising the steps of:

running a free-standing monitoring program in conjunction with a respective sensor and script injected into each of a plurality of applications in one or more client computers, said monitoring program operable to model objects of an application window and identify objects to be monitored based on predetermined monitoring criteria and to measure or facilitate measurement of at least response times and collect respective application events, wherein the scripts define one or more state machines;

detecting, by the one or more client computers using the one or more of the respective sensors, an indication of an environmental spectrum comprising invariant and time variant conditions in the applications comprising objects, graphical user interfaces, method calls, and method returns;

detecting, by the one or more client computers using the one or more of the respective scripts, state machine events in the environmental spectrum occurring in the applications;

correlating respective of the state machine events detected, by the one or more client computers using the one or more of the respective scripts, to respective patterns of states in multiple of the state machines to obtain multiple correlations;

executing, by the one or more client computers using one or more of the respective scripts, track commands to send tracks, based at least in part on the correlations to the patterns of states, wherein a respective track is a message to be sent to server software on a server computer that is part of a set of computers that includes the one or more client computers;

collecting, by the server computer, the tracks received from the execution of a plurality of the track commands for the different correlations;

generating and making accessible data, by the server computer, based at least in part on the tracks collected; and

measuring, by one or more of the set of computers, response times within multiple of the applications.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the correlating step further comprises gathering logical event data from the state machine events that is synergetic with the environmental spectrum indications.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the free-standing monitoring program includes instructions operable to perform the steps of:

injecting, by the one or more client computers, the different respective scripts into the plurality of the respective applications;

identifying byte opcode patterns in the applications;

detecting, using one of the scripts, at least one interface for a function among the identified byte opcode patterns that provides interfaces to events and properties of an application process, the application window, or window graphical user interface (GUI) objects;

determining, by the one script, an address of the function;

linking to the detected function by using a call intercept routine;

wherein a call by one of the applications to the detected interface of the function is detected.

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising executing a return intercept function wherein a return is tracked.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein the free-standing monitoring program further includes instructions operable to perform the step of handling a generic function intercept in a manner different from the manner of handling a specific function intercept;

wherein the generic function intercept does not require pre-knowledge of the parameters and format of the detected interface function.

6. The method of claim 3, wherein the free-standing monitoring program further includes instructions operable to perform the step of handling a generic function intercept in a manner different from the manner of handling a specific function intercept;

wherein a specific function intercept does contain an indication of published parameters and a format of the detected interface function and the specific function intercept enables direct use of the detected interface function parameters in a script.

7. The method of claim 3, further comprising the step of:

using a common handling routine to intercept calls to multiple functions.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the common handling routine passes instance information for the respective function call intercept to the common handler routine via a central processing unit (CPU) register or a CPU stack.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein each of the track commands produces a single track that reflects the pattern of states and conditions.

10. The method of claim 1, where the response time is measured by the server software.

11. The method of claim 1, where the response time is measured by the injected script.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising injecting under the control of the free-standing monitoring program the different respective scripts into the respective applications.

13. A method of monitoring a host application functionality, comprising the steps of:

injecting, by a client computer. different respective scripts into a respective host application;

monitoring a host application functionality and identifying, by the client computer, byte opcode patterns representing method calls within the host application;

detecting, by the client computer using one of the scripts, an instance of a method signature for a method among the identified byte opcode patterns, wherein the method provides at least one selected from the group of events and properties of an application process, an application window, and a window graphical user interface (GUI) objects;

determining, by the client computer using the one script and the detected method Signature, an address for a method call for the method of the detected method signature;

linking, by the client computer using the address, the method call to a call intercept routine;

executing, by the client computer, the call intercept routine;

jumping, by the client computer, to the method corresponding to the method call; and

monitoring, by the client computer, returns from the method with stack manipulations.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the linking step includes using a jump routine instruction.

15. The method of claim 13, wherein the step of monitoring returns from calls to the at least one method function comprises detecting return calls via one or more scripts.

16. A method for analyzing method events, comprising the steps of:

injecting sensors and scripts into one or more applications in one or more client computers, to measure or facilitate measurement of at least response times and collect respective application events, wherein the scripts define one or more state machines;

detecting, by the one or more client computers using the sensors, an indication of an environmental spectrum comprising invariant and time variant conditions in the one or more applications comprising objects, graphical user interfaces, method calls, and method returns;

detecting, by the one or more client computers using the scripts, state machine events in the indication of the environmental spectrum occurring in the one or more applications;

correlating respective of the state machine events detected, by the one or more client computers using one or more of the scripts, to respective patterns of states to obtain correlations;

executing, by the one or more client computers using one or more of the scripts, a plurality of track commands to send tracks to a server computer that is part of a set of computers that includes the one or more client computers, based at least in part on the respective correlations to the patterns of states;

collecting, by the server computer. the tracks received from the execution of the plurality of the track commands;

generating and making accessible report data, by the server computer, based at least in part on the tracks collected; and

measuring, by one or more of the set of computers, one or more response times within at least one of the one or more of the applications.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein there are multiple client computers, and

further comprising aggregating by one or more of the set of computers, data from the tracks received,

wherein the report data is based at least in part on the data aggregated from the tracks received.