Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Agilent Technologies, Inc.

Hewlett-packard Company

Concurix Corporation

Other

Maxtor Corporation

Water Pik, Inc.

Russell Steven Krajec

Alexander G Gounares

Ying Li

John L Bidwell

Tetsuo Seto

Bryan D Boswell

Bryce B Baril

Timothy A Bachman

Charles D Garrett

William J Gillette, Ii

Gary J Thomas

William R Miner

Vincent L Preston

Michael John Oreskey

Richard J Chapman

Andrew S Poulsen

Wallace J Lannen

Peter J Vanderheiden

Recommendations may be generated while calculating performance metrics from multiple uses of a software component. A tracing service may collect trace data from multiple uses of a software component, where each use may be done on different conditions. The performance metric analysis may identify various factors that may affect the performance of a software component, then present those factors to a user in different delivery mechanisms. In one such mechanism, a recommended set of hardware and software configurations may be generated as part of an operational analysis of a software component.

Software component recommendation based on multiple trace runs

Production or development uses of an application may be identified from tracing data when the data fits a heuristic. The heuristic may include length of execution run, number of executions, repeating patterns within the execution run, or other factors. Similarly, prototyping or development uses of an application may be identified by frequent code changes, sporadic uses, low loads, and other factors. The production and development uses of an application may be displayed by a uses versus user graph, where production users may be displayed as those users with the largest number of uses. The tracing data may be gathered by monitoring an entire application or from monitoring functions, modules, subroutines, libraries, interfaces, services, or other portions of an application.

Determination of production vs. development uses from tracer data

A load balanced system may incorporate instrumented systems within a group of managed devices and distribute workload among the devices to meet both load balancing and data collection. A workload distributor may communicate with and configure several managed devices, some of which may have instrumentation that may collect trace data for workload run on those devices. Authentication may be performed between the managed devices and the workload distributor to verify that the managed devices are able to receive the workloads and to verify the workloads prior to execution. The workload distributor may increase or decrease the amount of instrumentation in relation to the workload experienced at any given time.

Tracing with a workload distributor

Input sequence information may be analyzed and quantified using n-gram analysis of inputs received by an application. The sequences of inputs may be represented by n-grams, and the frequency of the various n-grams may indicate the 'real world' uses of the application in production, which may be compared to a test suite whose coverage may be quantified using a similar n-gram analysis. A coverage factor may compare the observed inputs to the application in production to the test suite for the application. The n-grams may be further quantified or prioritized by resource utilization and several visualizations may be generated from the data.

N-gram analysis of inputs to a software application

Visualizing execution of an application in a trace coverage graph includes receiving module trace data gathered during execution of an executable module. The module trace data includes data representing sequences of execution between individual executable components. A trace coverage graph is generated and displayed from the module trace data. The trace coverage graph includes graph nodes that each correspond to a different executable component. The trace coverage graph also includes graph edges that each visually connects two of the graph nodes. Each graph edge visually indicates an amount of trace data present for the sequence of execution between the graph nodes that are connected by the graph edge. Thicker graph edges represent the presence of a larger amount of trace data, and thinner graph edges represent the presence of a lesser amount of trace data.

Module specific tracing in a shared module environment

Periodicity similarity between two different tracer objectives may be used to identify additional input parameters to sample. The tracer objectives may be individual portions of a large tracer operation, and each of the tracer objectives may have separate set of input objects for which data may be collected. After collecting data for a tracer objective, other tracer objectives with similar periodicities may be identified. The input objects from the other tracer objectives may be added to a tracer objective and the tracer objective may be executed to determine a statistical significance of the newly added objective. An iterative process may traverse multiple input objects until exhausting possible input objects and a statistically significant set of input objects are identified.

Periodicity optimization in an automated tracing system

A tracing management system may use cost analyzes and performance budgets to dispatch tracing objectives to instrumented systems that may collect trace data while running an application. The tracing management system may analyze individual tracing workloads for processing, storage, and network performance costs, and select workloads to deploy based on a resource budget that may be set for a particular device. In some cases, complementary tracing objectives may be selected that maximize consumption of resources within an allocated budget. The budgets may allocate certain resources for tracing, which may be a mechanism to limit any adverse effects from tracing when running an application.

Deploying trace objectives using cost analyses

An event chain visualization of performance data may show the execution of monitored elements as bars on a timeline, with connections or other relationships connecting the various bars into a sequential view of an application. The visualization may include color, shading, or other highlighting to show resource utilization or performance metrics. The visualization may be generated by monitoring many events processed by an application, where each bar on a timeline may reflect multiple instances of a monitored element and, in some case, the aggregated performance.

Event chain visualization of performance data

An analysis system may perform network analysis on data gathered from an executing application. The analysis system may identify relationships between code elements and use tracer data to quantify and classify various code elements. In some cases, the analysis system may operate with only data gathered while tracing an application, while other cases may combine static analysis data with tracing data. The network analysis may identify groups of related code elements through cluster analysis, as well as identify bottlenecks from one to many and many to one relationships. The analysis system may generate visualizations showing the interconnections or relationships within the executing code, along with highlighted elements that may be limiting performance.

Relationships derived from trace data

Optimization analysis using similar frequencies

Comparisons of different versions of an application may be compared using a behavior model of the application. A behavior model may be derived from n-gram analysis of observations of the application in production. The behavior model may include sequences of inputs received by the application or functions performed by the application, where each sequence is an n-gram observed in tracer data. Each n-gram may be coupled with a resource consumption to give a behavior model with performance data. A regression analysis may apply a behavior model derived from a first version of an application to the performance observations of a new version to create an expected performance metric for the new version. A similarly calculated metric from a previous version may be compared to the metric from a new version to determine an improvement or degradation of performance.

Regression evaluation using behavior models of software applications

Increasing performance at runtime from trace data

A visualization system for a tracer may include a processing pipeline that may generate tracing data, preprocess the data, and visualize the data. The preprocessing step may include a mechanism to process user-defined expressions or other executable code. The executable code may perform various functions including mathematical, statistical, aggregation with other data, and others. The preprocessor may perform malware analysis, test the functionality, then implement the executable code. A user may be presented with an editor or other text based user interface component to enter and edit the executable code. The executable code may be saved and later recalled as a selectable transformation for use with other data streams.

Transformation function insertion for dynamically displayed tracer data

Regression testing of an application may gather performance tests for multiple functions within an application and determine when performance changes from one version of the application to another. The analysis may be further broken down by input sequences that may be processed by various functions. A detailed regression analysis may be presented as a heat map or other visualizations. A regression testing system may be launched during a build process by automatically launching a set of performance tests against an application. In many cases, the application may be executed in a system with a known or consistent performance capabilities. The application may be executed and tested in a new version and at least one prior version on the same hardware and software execution environment, so that results may be normalized from one execution run to another. A regression testing system may be deployed as a paid-for service that may integrate into a source code repository.

Automated regression testing for software applications

N-grams of input streams or functions executed by an application may be analyzed to identify security breaches or other anomalous behavior. A histogram of n-grams representing sequences of executed functions or input streams may be generated through baseline testing or production use. An alerting system may compare real time n-gram observations to the histogram of n-grams to identify security breaches or other changes in application behavior that may be anomalous. An alert may be generated that identifies the anomalous behavior. The alerting system may be trained using known good datasets and may identify deviations as bad behavior. The alerting system may be trained using known bad datasets and may identify matching behavior as bad behavior.

Growing community of inventors

Berthoud, CO, United States of America

Russell Steven Krajec