Root cause analysis

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10216565-B2
Application number	US-201715836973-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Dec 11, 2017
Priority date	Aug 26, 2016
Publication date	Feb 26, 2019
Grant date	Feb 26, 2019

Abstract

Systems, methods and tools for performing a root cause analysis and improvements to the root cause detection by changing the way analysts and troubleshooters interact with the error reporting files to detect injection points that indicate the root cause of a system error. The systems, methods and tools record the observable behavior of users as the users review files to identify behavioral clues of the user to infer a level of interest in sections of the files being viewed. The systems identify correlations between user behavior and emotive expression to calculate a probability of event data being the root cause of an error. The systems may manually or automatically generate one or more tags in the reviewed file for each of the sections of the file that has a probability of being a root cause of a defect and the tags may vary as a function of the probability.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for performing a root cause analysis, said method comprising:
opening, by a central processing unit (CPU), a file comprising event data;
recording, by the CPU, recordation data of a user's observable behavior while viewing the event data of the file, wherein the user's observable behavior includes the user's eye gaze;
identifying, by the CPU, a presence of one or more events of interest as a function of the user's observable behavior while viewing the event data of the file;
calculating, by the CPU, an interest score for each of the identified events of interest, wherein the interest score is a probability of each of the identified events of interest being a root cause of a defect; and
tagging, by the CPU, each of the events of interest within the file with a tag as a function of each calculated interest score;
wherein said identifying comprises:
tracking, by the CPU, a focal point of the user's eye gaze;
correlating, by the CPU, the focal point of the user's eye gaze to a viewing position of a display device displaying the file;
identifying, by the CPU, as a function of the viewing position, the event data being viewed and an amount of time that the event data is viewed by the user; and
further identifying, by the CPU, an emotive expression of the user during an amount of time focused on the viewing position, and

wherein said calculating comprises:
assigning, by the CPU, a numerical value to the viewing position, amount of time, emotive expression and event data viewed by the user; and
inserting, by the CPU, the numerical value assigned to the viewing position, amount of time, emotive expression and text of the event data, into a linear regression model; and
outputting, by the CPU, as a function of the linear regression model, a value of the interest score.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the file comprising event data is selected from the group consisting of a log file, configuration file and source code.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the linear regression model outputs a value of the interest score between 0-1 inclusively.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein said tagging the file comprises automatically generating a color coded tag in the file, and wherein the color coded tag generated is based on severity of the events of interest.

5. The method of claim 1 , said method further comprising providing at least one support service for at least one of creating, integrating, hosting, maintaining, and deploying computer-readable program code in a computer system, where the computer-readable program code in combination with the computer system is configured to implement said opening the file, said recording the recordation data, said identifying the presence of one or more events of interest, said calculating the interest score, and said tagging each of the events of interest within the file.

Assignees

• IBM

Inventors

• Cunico Hernan A
• Dunne Jonathan
• O'Connor Jeremiah
• Silva Asima

Classifications

• G06F11/079 Primary

  Root cause analysis, i.e. error or fault diagnosis (in a hardware test environment G06F11/22; in a software test environment G06F11/36) · CPC title

• G06F3/013

  Eye tracking input arrangements (G06F3/015 takes precedence) · CPC title

• G06F3/012

  Head tracking input arrangements · CPC title

• G06F11/0706

  the processing taking place on a specific hardware platform or in a specific software environment · CPC title

• G06F11/0787

  Storage of error reports, e.g. persistent data storage, storage using memory protection · CPC title