Transaction flow visualization

• US 9,983,856 B2
• Filed: 01/08/2016
• Issued: 05/29/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 01/08/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: CA, Inc. (d/b/a CA Technologies) (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: CA, Inc. (d/b/a CA Technologies) (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: Lau, Rich J.
• Primary Examiner(s): Pan, Hang
• Application Number:
  US14/991,001
• Publication Number:
  US 20170199727A1
• Time in Patent Office: 872 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/00 Information retrieval; Database structures therefor; File system structures therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0484 for the control of specific functions or operations, e.g. selecting or manipulating an object, an image or a displayed text element, setting a parameter value or selecting a range
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/35 model driven
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/70 Software maintenance or management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0601 Electronic shopping [e-shopping]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/04 Trading; Exchange, e.g. stocks, commodities, derivatives or currency exchange

Abstract

Transaction data is accessed and a flow of a particular one of the plurality of transactions is determined from the transaction data, the flow describing involvement of a particular set of the software components in the particular transaction and a plurality of transaction fragments of the particular transaction. A duration of each of the plurality of transaction fragments can be determined and a graphical representation of the flow can be generated that includes a set of graphical block elements and a set of graphical connector elements, each of the graphical block elements representing a respective software component, each of the graphical connector elements representing a respective one of the transaction fragments, where a particular one of the graphical connector elements is formatted based on the respective duration determined for the corresponding transaction fragment.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

accessing transaction data generated during monitoring of a plurality of transactions involving a plurality of software components in a system;

determining, from the transaction data, a flow of a particular one of the plurality of transactions, wherein the flow of the particular transaction describes involvement of a particular set of the plurality of software components in the particular transaction and a plurality of transaction fragments of the particular transaction;

determining a duration of each of the plurality of transaction fragments;

determining a relative duration of a particular one of the plurality of transaction fragments based on the duration of the particular transaction fragment, wherein the relative duration is relative to a duration of another instance of the particular transaction fragment in another transaction previous to the particular transaction; and

generating a graphical representation of the flow for presentation in a graphical user interface, wherein the graphical representation comprises a set of graphical block elements and a set of graphical connector elements, each of the graphical block elements representing a respective one of the plurality of software components, each of the graphical connector elements representing a respective one of the plurality of transaction fragments and connecting the graphical block elements of the respective software components involved in the corresponding transaction fragment, and a particular one of the graphical connector elements representing the particular transaction is formatted to indicate the relative duration determined for the particular transaction fragment.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein formatting the particular graphical connector element comprises coloring-coding the particular graphical connector element to identify the relative duration of the particular transaction fragment.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein a first color-coding is to indicate a relatively long duration and a second color-coding is to indicate a relatively short duration.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein each of the graphical connector elements is formatted according to the respective duration determined for the corresponding transaction fragment.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining a number of instances of each transaction fragment observed in the plurality of transactions during the monitoring; and

formatting width of each of the graphical connector elements based on the number of observed instances of the corresponding transaction fragment.

6. A method comprising:

accessing transaction data generated during monitoring of a plurality of transactions of a particular type, wherein the plurality of transactions involve a plurality of software components in a system and each transaction comprises a respective subset of a plurality of transaction fragments observed in the plurality of transactions;

determining, from the transaction data, a respective transaction flow for each of the plurality of transactions, wherein each transaction flow identifies a respective order of the transaction fragments of the corresponding transaction and the software components that participated in the transaction;

determining a collective transaction flow for the particular type of transaction representing a union of the transaction flows determined for the plurality of transactions;

determining a number of instances of each of the plurality of transaction fragments observed during the monitoring, wherein the number of instance of a first one of the plurality of transaction fragments is different from the number of instances of a second one of the plurality of transaction fragments; and

generating a graphical representation of the collective transaction flow to comprise a plurality of graphical block elements and a plurality of graphical connector elements, wherein each of the graphical block elements represents a respective one of the plurality of software components, each of the graphical connector elements represents a respective one of the plurality of transaction fragments and connects the graphical block elements of the respective software components involved in the corresponding transaction fragment, and a particular one of the each of the graphical connector elements is formatted according to the respective determined number of instances of the corresponding transaction fragment, wherein the graphical connector element representing the first transaction fragment is formatted differently than the graphical connector element representing the second transaction fragment.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein formatting the graphical connector elements comprises formatting thickness of each graphical connector element based on the respective number of instances of the corresponding transaction fragment represented by the graphical connector element.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein formatting the graphical connector element with a greater thickness correlates with a higher number of determined instances of the corresponding transaction fragment.

9. The method of claim 7, wherein the thickness of a graphical connector element indicates a relative frequency of the corresponding transaction fragment during the monitoring.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the relative frequency is relative to a previously recorded frequency of the corresponding transaction fragment in a previous transaction.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein the relative frequency is relative to frequency of other transaction fragments in the plurality of transaction fragments during the monitoring.

12. The method of claim 7, further comprising determining duration of each of the plurality of transaction fragments, wherein the graphical connector elements are further formatted based on the duration determined for the corresponding transaction fragment.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the graphical connector elements are color-coded based on the duration determined for the corresponding transaction fragment.

14. A computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium comprising computer readable program code embodied therewith, the computer readable program code comprising:

computer readable program code configured to access transaction data generated during monitoring of a plurality of transactions involving a plurality of software components in a system;

computer readable program code configured to determine, from the transaction data, a flow of a particular one of the plurality of transactions, wherein the flow of the particular transaction describes involvement of a particular set of the plurality of software components in the particular transaction and a plurality of transaction fragments of the particular transaction;

computer readable program code configured to determine a duration of each of the plurality of transaction fragments;

computer readable program code configured to determine a relative duration of a particular one of the plurality of transaction fragments based on the duration of the particular transaction fragment, wherein the relative duration is relative to a duration of another instance of the particular transaction fragment in another transaction previous to the particular transaction; and

computer readable program code configured to generate a graphical representation of the flow for presentation in a graphical user interface, wherein the graphical representation comprises a set of graphical block elements and a set of graphical connector elements, each of the graphical block elements representing a respective one of the plurality of software components, each of the graphical connector elements representing a respective one of the plurality of transaction fragments and connecting the graphical block elements of the respective software components involved in the corresponding transaction fragment, and a particular one of the graphical connector elements representing the particular transaction is formatted to indicate the relative duration determined for the particular transaction fragment.

15. A system comprising:

a data processing apparatus;

a memory device;

a transaction path engine to;

determine, from transaction data generated during a monitoring of a software system, a number of instances of each of a plurality of transaction fragments;

determine durations for each instance of the plurality of transaction fragments, wherein a plurality of software components of the software system are involved in the plurality of transaction fragments; and

determine an average duration for each of the plurality of transaction fragments from the respective durations determined for the instances of the corresponding transaction fragment; and

a graphical user interface (GUI) engine to generate a GUI to comprise a graphical representation of a transaction comprising the plurality of transaction fragments, wherein the graphical representation comprises a plurality of graphical block elements and a plurality of graphical connector elements, each of the graphical block elements represents a respective one of the plurality of software components, each of the graphical connector elements represents a respective one of the plurality of transaction fragments and connects the graphical block elements of the respective software components involved in the corresponding transaction fragment, and a particular one of the graphical connector elements representing a particular one of the plurality of transaction fragments is formatted according to represent the respective determined number of instances of the particular transaction fragment and further formatted to represent the determined average duration of the particular transaction fragment.

16. The system of claim 15, further comprising an agent manager to collect the transaction data from a plurality of agents instrumented in at least a portion of the plurality of software components.

17. The system of claim 16, further comprising the plurality of agents.