Deriving component statistics for a stream enabled application

• US 8,892,738 B2
• Filed: 04/04/2008
• Issued: 11/18/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 11/07/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Numecent Holdings Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Numecent Holdings Incorporated
• Inventors: de Vries, Jeffrey, Hitomi, Arthur Shingen
• Primary Examiner(s): Bullock, Jr., Lewis A
• Assistant Examiner(s): APONTE, FRANCISCO JAVIER
• Application Number:
  US12/062,766
• Publication Number:
  US 20090119644A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,419 Days
• Field of Search: 717101-178, 707601-831, 709/203, 709219-220, 709/231, 709/240, 370/400, 375/240, 703 26- 27, 713/153, 713/160, 380/277, 718 1-108
• US Class Current: 709/226
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3476 Data logging G06F11/14, G06F11/2205 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 17/18 for evaluating statistical data , e.g. average values, frequency distributions, probability functions, regression analysis forecasting specially adapted for a specific administrative, business or logistic context G06Q10/04
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/865 Monitoring of software
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/3851 from multiple instruction streams, e.g. multistreaming
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/463 Program control block organisation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/764 at the destination reformatting of additional data in video clients H04N21/4355

Abstract

A technique for generating component usage statistics involves associating components with blocks of a stream-enabled application. When the streaming application is executed, block requests may be logged by Block ID in a log. The frequency of component use may be estimated by analyzing the block request log with the block associations.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a processor and a memory;

a raw log;

a link map that associates files, offsets, and lengths that correspond to a component of a stream-enabled application with a feature of the stream-enabled application;

a virtual execution environment, wherein, in operation;

the stream-enabled application is a virtually installed application executing in the virtual execution environment,

an agent process for the virtually installed application requests resources as a part of a plurality of sessions,

the virtual execution environment;

associates resource requests of the plurality of sessions with a block to the virtually installed application,

associates the component of the stream-enabled application with the resource requests of the plurality of sessions,

generates a statistic comprising a frequency of usage of the component associated with the resource requests of the plurality of sessions in relation to the block, within at least one demographic group defined by a factor, the frequency depending on the association of the component with the resource requests of the plurality of sessions from the at least one demographic group, the statistic further comprising a percent coverage of the feature of the stream-enabled application by the component, and

logs an identifier of the block (block ID) in association with a session of the plurality of sessions into the raw log;

an aggregator, wherein, in operation, the aggregator receives the raw log including the block ID, collates the block ID with a unique session identifier (unique session ID) associated with the session, and formats the block ID and the unique session ID into a formatted log, thereby logging the statistic into the formatted log.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the raw log includes block requests received in accordance with a delta transmission protocol.

3. The system of claim 1 wherein the virtual execution environment executes on a streaming client of a streaming system, and the streaming client buffers the block ID and then transfers the block ID to a streaming server.

4. The system of claim 1 further comprising a component statistics engine wherein, in operation, the component statistics engine uses the formatted log to generate a report of popularity of the block within the at least one demographic group.

5. The system of claim 1 wherein the formatted log is formatted using a logical expression of a block-session grid.

6. The system of claim 1 wherein, in operation, the aggregator receives aggregation preferences and provides the formatted log in accordance with the aggregation preferences.

7. An apparatus comprising:

a processor and a memory;

a compilation tool, wherein, in operation, the compilation tool associates files, offsets, and lengths that correspond to a component of a stream-enabled application with a feature of the stream-enabled application based on a link map;

a component statistics and determination module, wherein, in operation, the component statistics and determination module;

receives block associations and a formatted log file comprising a block identifier (block ID) of a block associated with resource requests by an agent process in a plurality of sessions of the stream-enabled application executed as a virtually installed application,

receives a unique session identifier (session ID) associated with a unique session in which the agent process placed the resource requests, the block associated with the resource requests being associated with the component of the stream-enabled application,

generates a statistic comprising a frequency of usage of the component of the stream-enabled application in a plurality of sessions, within at least one demographic group defined by a factor, the frequency depending on an association of the component with the resource requests by the agent process in the plurality of sessions for the at least one demographic group, the statistic further comprising a percentage coverage of the feature of the stream-enabled application by the component, and

analyzes the block associations and formatted log file;

a report generation module, wherein, in operation, the report generation module receives report preferences and analysis from the component statistics and determination module and produces one or more reports, thereby logging the statistic into the one or more reports.

8. The system of claim 7 wherein the statistic comprises a popularity of the block within the at least one demographic group.

9. The system of claim 7 wherein the link map includes feature associations that are used to identify popularity of a feature, and the popularity is provided in the one or more reports.

10. The system of claim 7 wherein the statistic comprises a percent coverage of the stream-enabled application.