Dynamic event collection and structured storage

• US 8,689,239 B2
• Filed: 05/20/2009
• Issued: 04/01/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 05/20/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Taylor, John Anthony, Sedukhin, Igor, Zunino, Gilles C. J. A., Kulkarni, Amol Sudhakar, Wu, Haoran Andy, Mohanty, Sumit, Wolf, Kenneth D., MacNary, Timothy Glenn, Krejcik, Michael Josef
• Primary Examiner(s): Sough, H S
• Assistant Examiner(s): RONI, SYED A
• Application Number:
  US12/469,473
• Publication Number:
  US 20100299678A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,777 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 719/318
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/542 Event management; Broadcasting; Multicasting; Notifications

Abstract

In one embodiment, a computer system accesses an event associated with an activity, where the activity has been executed by a runtime as part of a software application. The runtime includes a software hook configured to listen for event stream operation indications from the user. The computer system tags the accessed event with an additional portion of identification information that uniquely identifies the executed activity. The computer system receives an event stream operation indication from the user indicating that event transmission for an identified event stream is to be dynamically enabled or disabled and identifies the user-indicated event stream using the tagged identification information. The computer system also dynamically performs the indicated event stream operation on the identified event stream according to the user'"'"'s indication.

Claims

1. At a computer system including a processor and a memory, in a computer networking environment including a plurality of computing systems, a computer-implemented method for performing operations based on applied event tags, the method comprising:

an act of accessing a plurality of events from one or more event streams associated with one or more activities, wherein the activities have been executed by one or more continuation based runtimes as part of software applications, the continuation based runtimes including software hooks configured to listen for event stream operation indications from a user, the continuation based runtimes being specialized software modules configured to execute activities in a customized manner as workflows, wherein each activity includes one or more pulses of work, and wherein each time a pulse of work is executed, an event related to the pulse of work is generated indicating that the pulse of work has been completed or changed state;

an act of tagging each of the events in the plurality of accessed events, after the events have been generated with an additional portion of identification information that uniquely identifies an application from which the event was emitted;

an act of receiving an event stream operation indication from a user indicating that event distribution to the user for an identified event stream is to be dynamically enabled, the event stream operation indication specifying an application identifier such that the identified event stream is an event stream of events emitted from a given application;

an act of identifying events from among the plurality of events corresponding to the application identifier; and

an act of distributing events from among the plurality of events corresponding to the application identifier to the user.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein events are continually and automatically accessed as the runtimes execute by a publisher-subscriber event collection system.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein a plurality of users are subscribed to the same event stream.

4. The method of claim 2, further comprising an act of automatically subscribing a user to an event stream upon determining that the event stream is being emitted from an application that provides the same functionality to an application to whose event stream the user is currently subscribed.

5. The method of claim 2, wherein the publisher-subscriber event collection system comprises an event collection agent and a lossy, low-latency, low-overhead channel.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising an act of storing one or more of the tagged events in a persistent store in a structured manner, such that the stored events form a relational contextual model of the runtime execution of an application.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising an act of troubleshooting the application using one or more of the tagged events stored in the persistent store, each event being stored in a structural manner such that the events form a relational model contextually representing how each activity corresponding to an event was executed.

8. The method of claim 6, wherein the relational model is different for each different application type.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the additional portion of identification information includes at least one of the following identification items:

application ID, virtual path, web site name, application domain ID or process ID.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the user indicates that a particular event stream is to be dynamically enabled by identifying an application ID such that a runtime hook is made aware that the user intends to subscribe or unsubscribe from an event stream for a given application.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein at least one of the identification items identifies which sub-component of the application emitted the event.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein events from a plurality of applications are sent to a user upon determining that the user has indicated that the user desires to receive corresponding events for each of the plurality of applications.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising an act of monitoring an event stream to determine from the stream how the event stream'"'"'s associated application is behaving.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein an emitted event is discarded upon determining that no user is subscribed to the event'"'"'s corresponding event stream.

15. A computer program product for implementing a method for storing received events such that the stored events form a relational model contextually representing how each activities of an application was executed, the computer program product comprising one or more computer-readable storage media having stored thereon computer-executable instructions that, when executed by one or more processors of the computing system, cause the computing system to perform the method, the method comprising:

an act of accessing a plurality of events from one or more event streams associated with one or more activities, wherein the activities have been executed by one or more continuation based runtimes as part of software applications, the continuation based runtimes including software hooks configured to listen for event stream operation indications from a user, the continuation based runtimes being specialized software modules configured to execute activities in a customized manner as workflows, wherein each activity includes one or more pulses of work, and wherein each time a pulse of work is executed, an event related to the pulse of work is generated indicating that the pulse of work has been completed or changed state;

an act of tagging each of the events in the plurality of accessed events, after the events have been generated with an additional portion of identification information that uniquely identifies an application from which the event was emitted; and

an act of storing events in a structured manner, such that the stored events form a relational model contextually representing how each of the activities of the applications was executed by storing the events according to the additional portion of identification information that uniquely identifies an application from which the event was emitted.

16. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein the events are stored in a persistent store which is further configured to store application models.

17. The computer program product of claim 16, wherein each application model is configured to store events in a manner corresponding to the application being executed by the runtime.

18. The computer program product of claim 15, further comprising accessing one or more of the stored events to perform a user-initiated action using the stored events.

19. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein the tagged information is stored with the event.

20. A computer system comprising the following:

one or more processors;

system memory; and

one or more computer-readable storage media having stored thereon computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, causes the computing system to perform a method for performing operations based on applied event tags, the method comprising the following;

an act of accessing a plurality of events from one or more event streams associated with one or more activities, wherein the activities have been executed by one or more continuation based runtimes as part of software applications, the continuation based runtimes including software hooks configured to listen for event stream operation indications from a user, the continuation based runtimes being specialized software modules configured to execute activities in a customized manner as workflows, wherein each activity includes one or more pulses of work, and wherein each time a pulse of work is executed, an event related to the pulse of work is generated indicating that the pulse of work has been completed or changed state;

an act of tagging each of the events in the plurality of accessed events, after the events have been generated with an additional portion of identification information that uniquely identifies an application from which the event was emitted;

an act of receiving an event stream operation indication from a user indicating that event distribution to the user for an identified event stream is to be dynamically enabled, the event stream operation indication specifying an application identifier such that the identified event stream is an event stream of events emitted from a given application;

an act of distributing events from among the plurality of events corresponding to the application identifier to the user; and

an act of storing events in a structured manner, such that the stored events form a relational model contextually representing how each of the activities of the applications was executed by storing the events according to the additional portion of identification information that uniquely identifies an application from which the event was emitted.