Method and system for browser based, non-intrusive measuring of end-user perceived performance of individual third party resource requests

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9356842-B2
Application number	US-201314056016-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 17, 2013
Priority date	Nov 9, 2012
Publication date	May 31, 2016
Grant date	May 31, 2016

Abstract

A performance management system is provided that measures end user performance in a distributed computing environment. The system detects DOM updates caused by browser side activities, and identifies resource load requests introduced by a DOM update that request resource from third party sources. For such resource load requests, resource sensors are installed which detect the point in time when loading the resource was finished. This allows to measure load time for individual resource load requests requesting third party resources, and to assign the tracing and performance monitoring data describing those resource load requests to the tracing and performance monitoring data describing the browser side transaction execution that caused the third party resource loads.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A computer-implemented method for monitoring performance of an application being executed by a web browser residing on a computing device and rendering content received from a web server, comprising:
detecting, by a sensor, a user interaction with the web browser and a content update request caused by the user interaction, where the sensor is instrumented in the content displayed by the web browser and executed by a processor of the computing device;
sending, by the sensor, an update notification to a browser agent in response to detecting the user interaction and the content update request caused by the user interaction, where the update notification indicates a possible update to a document object model which represents content displayed by the web browser;
receiving, by the browser agent, the update notification pertaining to the document object model, where the browser agent is injected into the content displayed by the web browser and executed by the processor of the computing device;
periodically determining, by the browser agent, whether an update of the document object model has occurred, the determination being performed in response to receiving the update notification pertaining to the document object model;
identifying, by the browser agent, elements added to the document object model according to the update notification, where the identified elements contain resource load directives which are serviced by data source other than the web server and were not previously instrumented; and
instrumenting, by the browser agent, an identified element with a resource sensor, where the resource sensor is comprised of instructions that are executed by the processor upon occurrence of a resource load event and generates an event message regarding the resource load event associated with the identified element.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the update notification pertaining to a document object model corresponding to a change of the content currently displayed by the web browser, where the change is caused by browser side execution of content update commands.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein identifying elements in the document object model further comprises searching for elements having tags indicative of an image or a script;
parsing the tags to identify a resource location;
comparing the resource location to an address for the web server; and
instrumenting the elements having tags indicative of an image or a script, where the corresponding resource location differs from the address for the web server.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprises
capturing, by a browser agent, a first action event indicative of a user interaction with the web browser;
capturing, by the browser agent, a second action event indicative of a resource load request from a data source other than the web server;
associating, by the browser agent, the second action event with the first action event; and
creating, by the browser agent, an action monitor request for the user interaction, where the action monitor request includes an identifier for the user interaction and at least one performance metric pertaining to the resource load request.

5. The method of claim 4 further comprises
determining, by the browser agent, whether the resource load request is caused by the user interaction; and
associating, by the browser agent, the second action event with the first action event only when the resource load request is caused by the user interaction.

6. The method of claim 4 further comprises determining, by the browser agent, a load time for the resource load request using data contained in the second action event.

7. The method of claim 4 further comprises retrieving, by the browser agent, a load time for the resource load request from a data repository of timing information related to HTML elements.

8. The method of claim 4 further comprises maintaining, by the browser agent, a list of on-premise web servers which should not be considered as third party resources and determining, by the browser agent, whether the second action event is indicative of a third party request using the list of on-premise web servers.

9. The method of claim 4 wherein the action monitor request includes a start timestamp indicating an occurrence of the user interaction and an end timestamp indicating an end time of the resource load caused by the user interaction.

10. The method of claim 9 further comprises
capturing, by the browser agent, a third action event indicative of a second resource load request from a data source other than the web server; and
updating the end timestamp in the action monitor request with a timestamp from either the second action event or the third action event, where the timestamp indicates an end time for the resource load and is the later of the timestamps provided in the second action event and the third action event.

11. The method of claim 4 further comprises
creating, by the browser agent, a third party record for each identified element instrumented with a resource sensor;
determining the performance metric pertaining to the resource load request from the second action event; and
sending, by the browser agent, the action monitor request over a data network to a monitor computing device located remotely from the computing device.

12. The method of claim 11 further comprises
grouping, by the browser agent, the third party records by domain servicing the corresponding resource load request; and
calculating, by the browser agent, statistical data for resource load request performance for a given domain from the group of third party records corresponding to the given domain.

13. The method of claim 4 further comprises
creating, by the browser agent, a third party record for each identified element instrumented with a resource sensor;
determining the performance metric pertaining to the resource load request from the second action event;
selecting, by the browser agent, a subset of the third party records for inclusion in the action monitor request; and
sending, by the browser agent, the action monitor request over a data network to a monitor computing device located remotely from the computing device.

14. The method of claim 4 further comprises
receiving, by a monitor computing device, the action monitor request, the monitor computing device located remotely from the computing device running the web browser;
calculating, by the monitor computing device, statistical data for browser side activities from data contained in the action monitor request;
calculating, by the monitor computing device, statistical data for resource load requests from data contained in the action monitor request; and
presenting, by the monitor computing device, the statistical data for the browser side activities and the resource load requests for comparison.

15. The method of claim 4 further comprises
capturing, by the browser agent, an indicator of geographic location for the computing device running the web browser;
sending, by the browser agent, the action monitor request over a data network to a monitor computing device located remotely from the computing device, where the action monitor request includes the indicator of geographic location; and
reporting, by the monitor computing device, on resource load requests using the indicator of geographic location retrieved from the action monitor request.

16. A computer-implemented method for monitoring performance of an application executed by a web browser residing on a computing device and rendering content received

Assignees

• Compuware Corp
• Dynatrace Llc

Inventors

• Greifeneder Bernd
• Spiegl Helmut
• Lackner Bernhard

Classifications

• H04L61/1505

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04L67/20

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04L67/10

  in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network (software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46) · CPC title

• H04L67/22

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04L41/5067 Primary

  Customer-centric QoS measurements · CPC title