Testing agent for application dependency discovery, reporting, and management tool

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11675692-B2
Application number	US-202117400720-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Aug 12, 2021
Priority date	Jun 27, 2019
Publication date	Jun 13, 2023
Grant date	Jun 13, 2023

Abstract

Techniques for monitoring operating statuses of an application and its dependencies are provided. A monitoring application may collect and report the operating status of the monitored application and each dependency. Through use of existing monitoring interfaces, the monitoring application can collect operating status without requiring modification of the underlying monitored application or dependencies. The monitoring application may determine a problem service that is a root cause of an unhealthy state of the monitored application. Dependency analyzer and discovery crawler techniques may automatically configure and update the monitoring application. Machine learning techniques may be used to determine patterns of performance based on system state information associated with performance events and provide health reports relative to a baseline status of the monitored application. Also provided are techniques for testing a response of the monitored application through modifications to API calls. Such tests may be used to train the machine learning model.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A computer-implemented method comprising:
intercepting, by a testing agent and during a testing period associated with a first application, a first call in a computing system from the first application to a first Application Programming Interface (API);
modifying, by the testing agent, the first call by mutating at least one attribute of the first call, wherein the mutation to the at least one attribute is configured to simulate an artificial unhealthy operating status of the first API;
causing the computing system to process the modified first call and return a result to the first application based on the mutation to the at least one attribute; and
determining an impact of the modified first call on the operating status of the first application,
wherein a second call to the first API is unaffected by mutating the at least one attribute of the first call.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the mutation to the at least one attribute comprises a change to a function name associated with the first API.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the mutation to the at least one attribute comprises a change to a parameter included in the first call.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the mutation to the at least one attribute comprises a change to a destination, container, or scope associated with the first API.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining the impact of the modified first call on the operating status of the first application comprises:
determining, by a monitoring application, the operating status of the first application using one or more monitoring interfaces; and
determining that the first application has an unhealthy operating status based on at least one metric provided by a first monitoring interface associated with the first application satisfying at least one unhealthy operating status threshold.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining the impact of the modified first call on the operating status of the first application comprises:
determining that the first application was able to retrieve information associated with the first API from another source.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining the impact of the modified first call on the operating status of the first application comprises:
determining that the first application was able to partially complete processing despite not receiving the information requested from the first API.

8. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
caching, by the testing agent, the unmodified first call;
determining, by a monitoring application, whether the first application was able to recover from the modified first call returning a failed result; and
based on determining that the first application was not able to recover, causing the computing system to process the cached unmodified first call and return a result to the first application based on the at least one attribute.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein intercepting the first call to the first API is based on determining that the first API is a dependency of the first application.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the testing agent is part of a monitoring application configured to monitor the first application using a plurality of monitoring interfaces,
wherein intercepting the first call to the first API is based on determining that the monitoring application is configured to monitor the first API.

11. A computer-implemented method comprising:
intercepting, by a testing agent and during a testing period associated with a first application, a first call in a computing system from the first application to a first Application Programming Interface (API);
causing the computing system to process the intercepted first call and return a modified result to the first application, wherein the modified result simulates an artificial unhealthy operating status of the first API; and
determining an impact of the modified result to the first call on the operating status of the first application,
wherein a second call to the first API is unaffected by modifying the result of the first call.

12. The method of claim 11 , wherein the modified result simulates an artificial unhealthy operating status of the first API by simulating a result with an artificially high response latency.

13. The method of claim 11 , wherein the modified result simulates an artificial unhealthy operating status of the first API by simulating a result with an artificially high error rate.

14. The method of claim 11 , wherein the modified result simulates an artificial unhealthy operating status of the first API by simulating a result with an artificially high likelihood of non-response.

15. The method of claim 11 , wherein determining the impact of the modified result on the operating status of the first application comprises:
determining, by a monitoring application, the operating status of the first application using one or more monitoring interfaces; and
determining that the first application has an unhealthy operating status based on at least one metric provided by a first monitoring interface associated with the first application satisfying at least one unhealthy operating status threshold.

16. The method of claim 11 , wherein determining the impact of the modified first call on the operating status of the first application comprises:
determining that the first application was able to retrieve information associated with the first API from another source.

17. The method of claim 11 , wherein determining the impact of the modified first call on the operating status of the first application comprises:
determining that the first application was able to partially complete processing despite not receiving the information requested from the first API.

18. The method of claim 11 , further comprising:
caching, by the testing agent, the first call;
determining, by a monitoring application, whether the first application was able to recover from the modified result to the first call; and
based on determining that the first application was not able to recover, causing the computing system to process the cached first call and return an unmodified result to the first application.

19. A non-transitory computer readable medium storing instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause a computing device to perform steps comprising:
intercepting, by a testing agent and during a testing period associated with a first application, a first call in a computing system from the first application to a first Application Programming Interface (API);
modifying, by the testing agent, the first call by mutating at least one attribute of the first call, wherein the mutation to the at least one attribute is configured to simulate an artificial unhealthy operating status of the first API;
causing the computing system to process the modified first call and return a result to the first application based on the mutation to the at least one attribute; and
determining an impact of the modified first call on the operating status of the first application,
wherein a second call to the first API is unaffected by mutating the at least one attribute of the first call.

20. The computer readable medium of claim 19 , wherein the mutation to the at least one attribute comprises at least one of:
a change to a function name associated with the first API;
a change to a parameter included in the first call; or
a change to a destination, container, or scope associated with the first API.

Assignees

• Capital One Services Llc

Inventors

• Balasubramanian Muralidharan
• Barnum Eric K
• Dallen Julie
• Watson David

Classifications

• G06F11/323

  Visualisation of programs or trace data · CPC title

• G06F11/0793

  Remedial or corrective actions (recovery from an exception in an instruction pipeline G06F9/3861; by retry G06F11/1402; for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40) · CPC title

• G06F11/302

  where the computing system component is a software system · CPC title

• G06F11/3692 Primary

  for test results analysis · CPC title

• G06F11/3495

  for systems · CPC title