International Business Machines Corporation

Jeffrey Phillip Snover

Brian James Tarbox

Bethany Rose Scaer

John Conrad Sanchez

A system for the accessing and addition of computing components outside of and consequently non-native to a current computer operation through a user interactive interface which involves predetermining a plurality of computing components to be selectively added to the computer operation, and designating and displaying a plurality of system elements. Means are provided for predetermining at least one invocative attribute for each of said elements and for enabling said selective addition of an associated computing component to said operation responsive to the occurrence of an invocative attribute. A listing of the computing components enabled for the selective addition is displayable for each of the displayed elements, together with means for selecting at least one of the listed enabled computing components to thereby add its associated computing component. This menu listing of those computing components enabled for addition to the current or native ongoing computer operations by the occurrence of invocative attributes relative to the system elements is available for user interaction wherever the element is displayed.

INTEGRATION OF ADDITIONAL COMPUTER COMPONENTS INTO A COMPUTER OPERATION THROUGH ATTRIBUTE ENABLED INTERACTIVE SELECTIONS PRESENTED IN COMPOSITE LISTS AVAILABLE TO THE USER IN A VARIETY OF DISPLAY SCREENS

A computer managed communication network with user interactive access via a plurality of display terminals and including a plurality of network objects, each respectfully associated with one of a plurality of linked network nodes. The network includes means such as databases for storing data representing attributes of network objects. There is graphically displayed on at least one of said display terminals, at least a portion of said linked network nodes and associated objects. In addition, there is a user interactive implementation for activating a transient display of a selected attribute of one of said displayed objects proximate to said object in combination with user interactive means for selecting the attribute to be transiently displayed. Preferably, the attribute is dynamically selected by user interactive means for activating the display of an attribute menu during the time of said transient display so that another attribute may be selected during said time.

System for displaying a computer managed network layout with transient display of user selected attributes of displayed network objects

A system and method of automatically injecting faults and errors into a JAVA application or program to test the reliable and proper handling of various faults and exceptions under various conditions. An automatic fault injector is coupled to the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). The JAVA program is initiated to inject the faults by determining locations within the JAVA program to where respective faults are to be injected. All the faults are found from the JAVA objects by traversing the class for each of the JAVA objects and searching for all exceptions from the classes, their methods, and their respective attributes. Determination is made of whether and when one of the respective faults should be injected. An exception is automatically and timely triggered to inject a respective fault by the automatic fault injector at a corresponding locations when the corresponding location has been reached and when it has determined that the respective fault should be injected at an appropriate time. The determination of whether and when a fault or error is to be automatically injected is based on the setting of an automatic fault injection option.

Automatic fault injection into a JAVA virtual machine (JVM)

A method of composing and displaying unique error messages is operative in a computer system having an error message subsystem. The error message subsystem is driven by non-contextual information, e.g., a set of previous error conditions, together with a current error condition. If the current error condition has the non-contextual information associated therewith, an error message is composed that is a function of the current error condition and the non-contextual information. Driving the error message subsystem in this manner provides a more robust and useful error messaging service.

Composition of error messages in an error message system based upon non-local contextual information

The present invention provides a mechanism for retrying a system operation on a remote node in a distributed environment. In an &ldquo;optimistic&rdquo; embodiment of the invention, a local system issues a set of commands over a network to a remote node to perform a system operation. Responsive to a failure by the remote node to perform the requested system action, the retry mechanism determines whether the remote node could be in a nonoperational state. If the remote node could be in the nonoperational state, the system issues a magic packet to the remote node. Next, the system waits a predetermined period of time for the remote node to be brought to a fully operational state. The system issues the set of commands a second time to the remote node to perform the system operation. In a &ldquo;preemptive&rdquo; or &ldquo;pessimistic&rdquo; embodiment of the invention, the likelihood that the remote node is in a powered down or similar state is sufficiently high to outweigh the cost of sending a magic packet over the network. Thus, to perform a system operation on a remote node, a magic packet is issued preemptively to the remote node over a network to bring it to a fully operational state. Then, the local system issues a set of commands over the network to the remote node to perform the system operation.

Retry mechanism for remote operation failure in distributed computing environment

A system is provided enabling the dynamic modification of error condition handling procedures and/or error message modification triggered by any of the set of basic error messages which are developed with and inherent in applications being executed on computers or computer networks. The system comprises means for basic detecting and handling of a basic set of error conditions, together with means for providing, on at least one display terminal, error messages relative to the detecting and handling means. The system also includes means for providing dynamic modifications in the basic handling of said error conditions during computer or network operations, means for recording data representative of the dynamic modifications, means responsive to the basic error messages for activating the dynamic modification means and means responsive to the activating means for searching said recorded data and augmenting said error messages with additional information relative to said modifications.

Dynamic enhancement of error condition handling and displayed error messages in computer operations

A computer managed communication network with user interactive access via a plurality of display terminals and including a plurality of network objects, each respectfully associated with one of a plurality of linked network nodes. The network includes means such as databases for storing data representing attributes of network objects. There is graphically displayed on at least one of said display terminals, at least a portion of said linked network nodes and associated objects. In addition, there is a user interactive implementation for activating for each of a plurality of objects, a primary transient display of a selected primary attribute of said object adjacent to the object and a second transient display of supplementary attributes of said object, remote from said selected object and active during the transience of the primary transient display. The invention operates effectively in a display setup in which objects are graphically displayed as icons without alphanumeric labels and the primary transient display serves to label selected object.

System for displaying a computer managed network layout with a first

A computer managed communication network with user interactive access via a plurality of display terminals and including a plurality of network objects, each respectfully associated with one of a plurality of linked network nodes. The network includes means such as databases for storing data representing attributes of network objects. There is graphically displayed on at least one of said display terminals, at least a portion of said linked network nodes and associated objects. In addition, there is a user interactive implementation for activating for each of a plurality of objects, a transient display of a selected attribute of said object proximate to said object during a period of common transience. The system further includes user interactive means for varying the period of transience of each of said transient displays whereby the attribute values of a variety of objects may be compared to each other without unduly cluttering the display interface.

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Austin, TX, United States of America

Jeffrey Phillip Snover