Detection of abnormal transaction loops

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-12204526-B2
Application number	US-202318376433-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 3, 2023
Priority date	Jul 28, 2014
Publication date	Jan 21, 2025
Grant date	Jan 21, 2025

Abstract

Examples relate to detecting an abnormality. The examples disclosed herein enable receiving, from a first user, a first request to perform a first transaction on at least one data record. A plurality of transactions originated from the first request may be organized in a first hierarchical tree-based data structure having multiple depth levels. The data structure may comprise a root node representing the first transaction and a leaf node representing a second transaction. The examples further enable detecting the abnormality based on at least one parameter where the at least one parameter comprises a size of the data structure and a depth level associated with the leaf node.

First claim

What is claims is:

1. A method performed by a computing device for detecting an abnormality, the method comprising:
providing a first hierarchical tree-based data structure having multiple depth levels, the first hierarchical tree-based data structure describing a plurality of transactions originated from a first request and comprising a root node representing a first transaction and a leaf node representing a second transaction of the plurality of transactions;
detecting an abnormality in the plurality of transactions in a system based on a comparison of a depth level of the leaf node to a depth threshold, wherein a result indicates that the depth level of the leaf node exceeds the depth threshold; and
in response to the detected abnormality, performing at least one of stopping or rolling back a latest transaction of the plurality of transactions.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
receiving, from a second user, a second request to perform the first transaction; and
organizing a plurality of transactions originated from the second request in a second hierarchical tree-based data structure, wherein the plurality of transactions comprise a root node represented by the first transaction.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the plurality of transactions in the first hierarchical tree-based data structure are associated with a first identifier that uniquely identifies the first request, and wherein the plurality of transactions in a second hierarchical tree-based data structure are associated with a second identifier that uniquely identifies the second request.

4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
identifying a time of the first request and data records affected by the first request; and
generating an alert based on the detected abnormality, wherein the alert includes root cause information related to the detected abnormality, the root cause information comprising the time of the first request and information identifying the data records affected by the first request.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the second transaction is called directly or indirectly by the first transaction.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
determining that the first transaction performed on a first data record requires the second transaction performed on a second data record related to or affected by the first data record.

7. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
collecting statistics relating to depth levels of a plurality of hierarchical tree-based data structures for different requests; and
computing the depth threshold based on the statistics.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein detecting the abnormality in the plurality of transactions in the system is further based on detecting that a number of nodes of the first hierarchical tree-based data structure exceeds a size threshold.

9. A non-transitory machine-readable storage medium comprising instructions that upon execution cause a computing device to:
generate a first transaction tree that organizes a first set of transactions in a hierarchical data structure, wherein the first transaction tree comprises a first set of nodes including a root node representing an initial transaction and a leaf node representing a latest transaction of the first set of transactions, wherein the root node and the leaf node are at different depth levels in the first transaction tree;
compare a depth level of the leaf node in the first transaction tree to a depth threshold;
detect an abnormality in the first set of transactions in a system based on a result of comparing the depth level to the depth threshold, wherein the result indicates that the depth level of the leaf node in the first transaction tree exceeds the depth threshold;
generate an alert based on the detected abnormality; and
cause an execution of the latest transaction to be ceased.

10. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 9 , wherein the instructions upon execution cause the computing device to:
generate a second transaction tree that organizes a second set of transactions originated from a second user request in a hierarchical data structure, wherein the second transaction tree comprises a second set of nodes including a root node representing an initial transaction executed based on the second user request and a leaf node representing a latest transaction of the second set of transactions; and
detect the abnormality based on a depth level of the leaf node in the second transaction tree; and
wherein the instructions to generate the first transaction tree are in response to a first user request.

11. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 9 , wherein the instructions upon execution cause the computing device to:
cause the execution of the latest transaction further comprising causing the execution of the latest transaction to be ceased based on the alert.

12. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 10 , wherein the first set of transactions comprises at least one of insert, update, or delete operations on a database record.

13. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 9 , wherein the detection of the abnormality comprises detecting an abnormal transaction loop in the first set of transactions.

14. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 9 , wherein the instructions upon execution cause the computing device to:
collect statistics relating to depth levels of a plurality of transaction trees for different requests; and
compute the depth threshold based on the statistics.

15. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 9 , wherein detecting the abnormality is further based on a number of nodes of the first transaction tree exceeding a size threshold.

16. A system comprising:
a processor; and
a non-transitory storage medium storing instructions executable on the processor to:
determine whether a performance of a first transaction requires a second transaction to be performed on a second data entity that is related to a first data entity;
in response to determining that the performance of the first transaction requires the second transaction to be performed on the second data entity, compare a depth level of a second node to a depth threshold;
detect an abnormal transaction loop in a plurality of transactions in a computing system in response to the depth level of the second node exceeding the depth threshold, the plurality of transactions comprising the first transaction and the second transaction; and
in response to detecting the abnormal transaction loop, cause a latest transaction of the plurality of transactions to cease.

17. The system of claim 16 , wherein the instructions are executable on the processor to:
determine whether the performance of the second transaction requires a third transaction to be performed on a third data entity that is related to the second data entity;
in response to determining that the performance of the second transaction requires the third transaction to be performed on the third data entity, cause storing of a representation of the third transaction as a third node in a hierarchical data tree, wherein the third node has a depth level that is deeper than the depth level of the second node; and
detect the abnormal transaction loop in response to the depth level of the third node exceeding the depth threshold.

18. The system of claim 17 , wherein a size of the hierarchical data tree comprises a number of nodes in the hierarchical data tree, and wherein detecting the

Assignees

• Micro Focus Llc

Inventors

• Chen Rotem
• Babay Adi Hava
• Felder Yifat
• Biron Ran

Classifications

• G06F11/00

  Error detection; Error correction; Monitoring (error detection, correction or monitoring in information storage based on relative movement between record carrier and transducer G11B20/18; monitoring, i.e. supervising the progress of recording or reproducing G11B27/36; in static stores G11C29/00) · CPC title

• G06F11/34

  Recording or statistical evaluation of computer activity, e.g. of down time, of input/output operation {; Recording or statistical evaluation of user activity, e.g. usability assessment} · CPC title

• G06F17/00

  Digital computing or data processing equipment or methods, specially adapted for specific functions (information retrieval, database structures or file system structures therefor G06F16/00) · CPC title

• G06F11/08

  Error detection or correction by redundancy in data representation, e.g. by using checking codes · CPC title

• G06F16/2365

  Ensuring data consistency and integrity · CPC title