Module specific tracing in a shared module environment

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9292415-B2
Application number	US-201414455156-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Aug 8, 2014
Priority date	Sep 4, 2013
Publication date	Mar 22, 2016
Grant date	Mar 22, 2016

Abstract

A module-specific tracing mechanism may trace the usage of a module on behalf of the module developer. The module may be used by multiple application developers, and the tracing system may collect and summarize data for the module in each of the different applications. The data may include usage data as well as performance data. Usage data may include anonymized data for each time the module may be invoked and called, and performance data may include the processing time, memory consumption, and other metrics. The module-specific tracing may be enabled or disabled by an application developer.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A system comprising:
at least one processor;
a tracing database;
a preprocessor system that:
collects tracing output from a plurality of applications, each of said plurality of applications comprising a reusable module and a tracing mechanism, said tracing mechanism configured to gather reusable module tracing data from said reusable module; and
stores said reusable module tracing data in said tracing database;

a tracing data server that:
receives a request for said reusable module tracing data; and
returns at least a portion of said reusable module tracing data in response to said request, said at least a portion of said reusable module tracing data being displayable on one of a plurality of user interfaces;

a first user interface that is accessible to a module developer, said first user interface being accessible after receiving authentication from said module developer, said first user interface being one of said plurality of user interfaces; and
a second user interface that is accessible to a third party, said second user interface being accessible without receiving authentication from said module developer, said second user interface being one of said plurality of user interfaces;
said first user interface displaying said reusable module tracing data; and
said second user interface displaying a subset of said reusable module tracing data.

2. The system of claim 1 , said tracing mechanism being invoked from within said reusable module.

3. The system of claim 1 , said tracing mechanism being invoked from outside said reusable module.

4. The system of claim 1 , said tracing mechanism being configurable from settings within each of said plurality of applications.

5. The system of claim 1 , said tracing data reusable module being anonymized.

6. The system of claim 5 , said reusable module tracing data being anonymized by said preprocessor system when said reusable module tracing data are collected.

7. The system of claim 1 , said reusable module tracing data comprising performance data.

8. The system of claim 7 , said performance data comprising resource usage.

9. The system of claim 8 , said reusable module tracing data further comprising usage data.

10. The system of claim 9 , said usage data comprising usage data for each of a plurality of functions within said reusable module.

11. The system of claim 10 , said usage data further comprising a count of a number of different applications that have incorporated said reusable module.

12. The system of claim 1 , said second user interface further displaying a badge, said badge comprising at least one metric derived from said reusable module tracing data.

13. The system of claim 12 , said at least one metric being a number of observations within said reusable module tracing data.

14. The system of claim 13 , said number of observations being executions of said reusable module.

15. The system of claim 13 , said number of observations being a number of said plurality of applications comprising said reusable module.

16. A method performed by at least one computer processor, said method comprising:
collecting tracing output from a plurality of applications, each of said plurality of applications comprising a reusable module and a tracing mechanism, said tracing mechanism configured to gather reusable module tracing data from said reusable module;
storing said reusable module tracing data in a tracing database;
receiving a first request for said reusable module tracing data;
determining that said first request is authenticated;
returning a first user interface displaying a first subset of said reusable module tracing data in response to determining that said first request is authenticated;
receiving a second request for said reusable module tracing data;
determining that said second request is not authenticated; and
returning a second user interface displaying a second subset of said reusable module tracing data in response to determining that said second request is not authenticated, said first subset of said reusable module tracing data being more detailed than said second subset of said reusable module tracing data.

17. The method of claim 16 further comprising:
anonymizing at least a portion of said second subset of said reusable module tracing data as displayed on said second user interface.

18. The method of claim 17 , said first subset of said reusable module tracing data comprising non-anonymized data.

19. The method of claim 16 further comprising:
receiving permission from an application developer to collect said tracing output.

20. The method of claim 19 further comprising:
determining a tracing configuration from each of said plurality of applications prior to collecting said tracing output.

21. A system comprising:
at least one processor;
an application trace database;
a reusable module trace database;
a data preprocessor executing on said at least one processor, said data preprocessor that:
collects tracing data from an application, said application comprising application specific code and reusable module code;
identifies reusable module trace data and stores said reusable module trace data in said reusable module trace database; and
identifies application trace data and stores said application trace data in said application trace database; and

an analysis engine that:
receives a first request for said tracing data;
determines that said first request is not authenticated;
creates an application-specific view of said application trace data in response to determining that said first request is not authenticated;
receives a second request for said tracing data;
determines that said second request is authenticated; and
creates a reusable module-specific view of said reusable module trace data in response to determining that said second request is authenticated.

22. The system of claim 21 , said reusable module-specific view comprising reusable module trace data collected from a plurality of applications.

23. The system of claim 22 , said reusable module-specific view comprising performance metrics for a reusable module.

24. The system of claim 23 , said performance metrics comprising resource usage for said reusable module.

25. The system of claim 24 , said performance metrics being defined for each of a plurality of functions contained in said reusable module.

26. The system of claim 22 , said reusable module-specific view comprising usage metrics for a reusable module.

27. The system of claim 26 , said usage metrics being defined for each of a plurality of functions contained in said reusable module.

28. The system of claim 27 , said usage metrics being further defined for each of said plurality of applications.

29. The system of claim 21 , said reusable module-specific view comprising a reliability metric.

30. The system of claim 29 , said reliability metric being a single metric for a reusable module.

31. The system of claim 29 , said reusable module-specific view comprising a reliability metric for each of a plurality of functions contained in said reusable module.

32. A system comprising:
at least one processor;
a reusable module specific tracing database storing tracing data comprising use data and performance data for a plurality

Assignees

• Concurix Corp
• Microsoft Technology Licensing Llc

Inventors

• Seto Tetsuo
• Gounares Alexander G
• Krajec Russell S

Classifications

• G06F21/12 Primary

  Protecting executable software · CPC title

• G06F11/3466

  Performance evaluation by tracing or monitoring · CPC title

• G06F11/3636 Primary

  by tracing the execution of the program · CPC title

• G06F21/31

  User authentication · CPC title

• G06F2201/865

  Monitoring of software · CPC title