SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR TROUBLESHOOTING SOFTWARE CONFIGURATION PROBLEMS USING APPLICATION TRACING

• US 20080244534A1
• Filed: 06/09/2008
• Published: 10/02/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 11/06/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: BMC Software Israel Ltd. (KKR & Co., Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Ido Ben Moshe, Shlomo Wygodny, Valery Golender
• Inventors: Golender, Valery, Moshe, Ido Ben, Wygodny, Shlomo
• Granted Patent: US 8,762,958 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/128
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3636 by tracing the execution of the program
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/366 using diagnostics G06F11/0703 takes precedence

Abstract

A software system is disclosed which facilitates the process of tracing the execution paths of a program, called a client or application. Trace data corresponding to selected system resources that interact with the execution of the application is collected during the tracing operation and stored in an application signature. A computer system user can generate trace options, trace the application, and compare the application signature to a known software configuration. The application signature is compared to a reference signature created by tracing the execution of the application on a system with the known software configuration. In another embodiment, the application signature is compared to a static configuration of a reference computer.

Claims

1. A software system for troubleshooting a configuration problem of a software application, the application including at least an executable code representation, the software system comprising:

a first code module that attaches to a first memory image of the application, the first code module configured to trace a first execution of the application, the application using a first software configuration that is properly functioning, and to store data reflecting the first execution in a first application signature, the first application signature containing data representing properties of first system resources that interact with the application during the first execution;

a second code module that attaches to a second memory image of the application, the second code module configured to trace a second execution of the application using a second software configuration that is malfunctioning and to store data reflecting the second execution in a second application signature, the second application signature containing data representing properties of second system resources that interact with the application during the second execution; and

a third code module configured to correlate the first application signature to the second application signature to help a computer system user identify the reason for the malfunction.

2. The software system of claim 1, further comprising a fourth code module configured to select the properties of the first system resources and the second system resources to be traced by the first code module and the second code module.

3. The software system of claim 2, wherein the second code module is configured to execute separately from the first, third and fourth code modules, the system thereby enabling remote evaluation of the second software configuration.

4. The software system of claim 1, wherein the third code module is further configured to translate the first application signature and the second application signature into a human-readable form and to display a comparison of the translated trace information on a display screen.

5. A method for analyzing a software configuration on a computer system, the method comprising:

tracing an execution of an application computer program on the computer system by attaching an application program interface tracer to the application;

collecting trace data relating to the execution of the application and storing the trace data in a first application signature;

generating reference data from at least one source selected from the group comprising, known computer system configuration errors, a second application signature corresponding to executing the application using a known software configuration, and a static configuration of a reference computer; and

selectively analyzing differences between the first application signature and the reference data.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein collecting trace data comprises collecting a plurality of objects having first properties relating to the execution of the application and generating reference data from the static configuration of the reference computer comprises generating the plurality of objects having second properties collected from the reference computer.

7. The method of claim 5, wherein tracing the execution of the application comprises tracing a system call used by the application for access to a system resource.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein tracing the system call comprises tracing at least one operating system (OS) function selected from the group comprising file operations, registry operations, component object model (COM) operations, process operations, and library operations.

9. The method of claim 7, wherein collecting trace data comprises:

determining a property for the system resource corresponding to the system call; and

comparing the determined property to a corresponding property in the reference data.

10. The method of claim 7, further comprising tracing computer system data selected from the group comprising hardware information, operating system data, drive information, environment variables, services information, driver information, Internet server and browser configuration information, component object model (COM) configuration, object linking and embedding (OLE) configuration, and remote procedure call (RPC) configuration.

11. The method of claim 5, wherein selectively analyzing differences comprises distinguishing a first state for each of a plurality of first objects in the first application signature and a second state for each of a plurality of corresponding second objects in the reference data.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising selecting each first state and each second state from the group comprising object existence, object existence with different properties, object existence with same properties, no attempt to access object, successful attempt to access object, successful attempt to access object with different properties, successful attempt to access object with same properties, failed attempt to access object, and dynamic object.

13. The method of claim 11, further comprising using visual indicia configured to identify each first state and each second state.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the visual indicia comprise color-coded symbols.

15. The method of claim 11, further comprising comparing a subset of object attributes corresponding to the plurality of first objects and the plurality of second objects.

16. The method of claim 11, further comprising editing the reference data to exclude non-relevant resources.

17. A software execution tracing system for analyzing software configuration errors in a computer system, the software system comprising:

a first code module configured to attach to an application and to generate trace data corresponding to system resources configured to interact with an execution of the application;

a second code module configured to display the system resources together with their first properties corresponding to a failed execution of the application caused by a malfunctioning software configuration; and

a third code module configured to display the system resources together with the first properties and second properties corresponding to a successful execution of the application on a known software configuration to thereby allow a user to compare the first properties to the second properties.

18. The software system of claim 17, wherein the third code module is further configured to compare the first properties and the second properties and to display comparison results together with the system resources.

19. The software system of claim 17, further comprising a fourth code module configured to allow a user to select for display the first properties and the second properties from a plurality of system resource properties.

20. The software system of claim 19, wherein the fourth code module is further configured to select comparison results to be displayed by the third code module.

21. A software system for troubleshooting a configuration problem of a software application, the software system comprising:

a first code module configured to trace the execution of the application by attaching to a memory image of the application and to generate traced data corresponding to a plurality of system resources accessed by the application during execution; and

a second code module configured to correlate the traced data to reference data corresponding to a known software configuration and to display the correlated traced data and reference data for analysis.

22. The software system of claim 21, further comprising a third code module configured to select which system resources of the plurality of resources to include in the traced data.

23. The software system of claim 21, wherein the second code module comprises:

a first user interface configured to selectively display first object properties from the traced data associated with each of the plurality of system resources; and

a second user interface configured to selectively display a comparison of the first object properties with corresponding second object properties from the reference data.

24. The software system of claim 23, wherein the first user interface is further configured to edit the first object properties.

25. The software system of claim 22, wherein the second user interface comprises visible indicia configured to indicate a first object state corresponding to the first object properties and a second object state corresponding to the second object properties.

26. The software system of claim 21, wherein a portion of the visible indicia are further configured to highlight the differences between the first object properties and the second object properties.

27. The software system of claim 22, wherein the second user interface comprises a third user interface configured to:

select which first object properties and second object properties to compare; and

select at least one combination of comparison results to display.