SYNTHETIC TRANSACTIONS BASED ON SYSTEM HISTORY AND LOAD

• US 20070266148A1
• Filed: 11/30/2006
• Published: 11/15/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 05/11/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: CA, Inc. (d/b/a CA Technologies) (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Computer Associates Think Inc. (Broadcom, Inc.)
• Inventors: Ruiz, Jon, Zuzga, Brian, Thio, Ling
• Granted Patent: US 8,051,163 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/50 Testing arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/55 Testing of service level quality, e.g. simulating service usage

Abstract

Synthetic transactions for a network system are generated based on monitoring of the network system. One or more network system monitoring systems receive network system traffic, traffic monitoring data and/or application runtime data during a monitoring process. The traffic monitoring data may be derived from network system traffic and the application runtime data may be data associated with application transactions. The traffic, traffic monitoring data and application runtime data may contain information regarding the scope and frequency of the functionality tested by the actual traffic received by the network system. Synthetic transactions may be generated and transmitted to test the network system based on the scope and frequency of the functionality tested by actual traffic.

Claims

1. A method for generating synthetic transactions, comprising:

receiving actual traffic for a network system;

determining network system functionality tested by the actual traffic;

determining a current load experienced by the network system; and

generating synthetic transactions based on the tested functionality and the current load.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said step of receiving actual traffic includes receiving actual traffic sent to and received from a web server, the network system including a web server.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein said step of determining the network system functionality includes:

identifying one or more uniform resource locators contained in requests received by the network system.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein said step of determining the network system functionality includes:

determining an application component used to process a portion of the actual traffic.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein said step of determining the network system functionality includes:

determining the scope of the network system functionality tested by actual traffic.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein said step of determining the network system functionality includes:

determining the frequency of the network system functionality tested by actual traffic.

7. The method of claim 6, determining the frequency of each transaction tested by the actual traffic.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein said step of generating synthetic transactions includes:

generating synthetic transactions for network system functionality that has not been tested by the actual traffic.

9. One or more processor readable storage devices having processor readable code embodied on said processor readable storage devices, said processor readable code for programming one or more processors to perform a method comprising:

receiving traffic monitoring data derived from actual traffic experienced for a network system;

receiving application runtime data for an application processing the actual traffic; and

generating synthetic transactions based on the traffic monitoring data and the application runtime data.

10. The one or more processor readable storage devices of claim 9, wherein said step of receiving traffic monitoring data includes:

receiving the traffic; and

generating traffic monitoring data associated with the traffic, the traffic monitoring data including traffic transaction information, the synthetic transactions based in part on the traffic monitoring data.

11. The one or more processor readable storage devices of claim 9, wherein said step of receiving application runtime data includes:

retrieving application runtime data from an application processing a web server request.

12. The one or more processor readable storage devices of claim 9, wherein said step of generating synthetic transactions includes:

determining the scope of the network system functionality tested by the actual traffic, the scope determined from traffic monitoring data derived from the received traffic and the application runtime data.

13. The one or more processor readable storage devices of claim 9, wherein said step of generating synthetic transactions includes:

determining the frequency of the network system functionality tested by the actual traffic, the scope determined from the received traffic.

14. The one or more processor readable storage devices of claim 9, wherein said step of generating synthetic transactions includes:

comparing traffic monitoring data and application runtime data to target data.

15. The one or more processor readable storage devices of claim 9, wherein said step of generating synthetic transactions includes:

determining that a first network system functionality has not been tested; and

generating one or more synthetic transactions to test the network system functionality.

16. An apparatus for processing data, comprising:

a communication interface;

a storage device; and

one or more processors in communication with said storage device and said communication interface, said one or more processors perform a method comprising,

determining a network system functionality tested by actual traffic received by a network system,

comparing the scope of network system functionality tested by actual traffic to target network system functionality metrics,

determining the load received by the network system, and

generating synthetic transaction instructions based on results of the comparison and the network system load.

17. The apparatus of claim 16, wherein said step of determining the network system functionality tested includes:

receiving data associated with the actual traffic and processing of the actual traffic; and

determining the processing performed by one or more applications for the actual traffic from the received data.

18. The apparatus of claim 16, wherein said step of determining the network system functionality tested includes:

integrating traffic monitoring data and application runtime data, the traffic monitoring data derived from the actual traffic and the application runtime data retrieved from one or more applications that process the actual traffic; and

identifying the functionality tested from the integrated traffic monitoring data and application runtime data.

19. The apparatus of claim 16, wherein said step of comparing the scope includes:

comparing actual traffic HTTP information to target HTTP information.

20. The apparatus of claim 19, wherein the HTTP information includes a uniform resource locator.

21. The apparatus of claim 16, wherein said step of generating synthetic transaction instructions includes:

identifying one or more agitators associated with one or more servers providing network system functionality; and

generating instructions for each of the one or more agitators.

22. A method for generating synthetic transaction instructions, comprising:

determining a scope of system functionality tested by actual traffic received by a network system;

comparing the scope of network system functionality tested by actual traffic to target network system functionality data;

determining the load currently received by the network system; and

generating synthetic transactions based on results of said step of comparing and the network system load.

23. The method of claim 22, wherein said step of determining the scope includes receiving URL data and application component data from one or more monitoring systems in communication with the network system.

24. The method of claim 22, wherein said step of comparing includes:

determining if the scope of system functionality tested is less than the target network system functionality data.

25. The method of claim 22, wherein said step of comparing includes:

determining if the frequency of system functionality tested is less than the target frequency data included in the network system functionality data.

26. The method of claim 22, wherein said step of generating synthetic transactions includes:

generating synthetic transactions having a priority which corresponds to the load of network system load.

27. The method of claim 26, wherein said step of generating synthetic transactions having a priority which corresponds to the load includes:

determining the network system currently has a high load; and

generating synthetic transactions having a high priority in response to determining the network system currently has a high load.

28. A method for monitoring a network service, comprising:

determining whether an application within an application server is processing traffic received by the application server;

determining whether a web server within a network system is receiving traffic that requires application processing, the web server in communication with the application server, the network system including the application server; and

generating a synthetic transaction instruction in response to said steps of determining whether an application within an application server is processing traffic and determining whether a web server within a network system is receiving traffic, the synthetic transaction instruction configured to determine the operating state of the network system.

29. The method of claim 28, wherein said step of determining that an application within an application server is not processing traffic includes:

determining that application runtime data for the application has not been received from the application during a period of time.

30. The method of claim 28, wherein said step of determining that a web server within a network system is not receiving traffic includes:

determining that observed network system traffic has not been received from a traffic monitor during a period of time

31. The method of claim 28, further comprising:

generating a synthetic transaction based on the synthetic transaction instruction, the synthetic transaction configured to submit a web server request which requires the web server to submit a request to the application.

32. The method of claim 28, further comprising:

sending the synthetic transaction instruction to an agitator; and

receiving a confirmation from the agitator in response to said step of sending the synthetic transaction.

33. A method for generating synthetic transactions, comprising:

receiving traffic monitoring data by a traffic monitoring system, the traffic monitoring data associated with traffic received by a network system;

receiving application runtime data by an application monitoring system, the application runtime data associated with an application on an application server within the network system

processing the traffic monitoring data and the application runtime data by one of the traffic monitoring system and the application monitoring system; and

generating one or more synthetic transactions in response to said step of processing the traffic monitoring data and the application runtime data.

34. The method of claim 33, wherein said step of processing includes:

accessing the traffic monitoring data by the application monitoring system, wherein said step of generating one or more synthetic transactions is initiated by the application monitoring system.

35. The method of claim 33, wherein said step of processing includes:

accessing the application runtime data by the traffic monitoring system, wherein said step of generating one or more synthetic transactions is initiated by the traffic monitoring system.

36. The method of claim 33, wherein said step of processing includes:

comparing target data to the traffic monitoring data and the application runtime data by said one of the traffic monitoring system and the application monitoring system that process the data.

37. The method of claim 36, wherein said step of generating one or more synthetic transactions includes:

adjusting the level of synthetic transactions sent to the network system based on said step of comparing.