Forming stack frame signatures
AssigneeTechtracker, Inc.
InventorsScott Elliott, Kenneth Gengler
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method of forming a stack signature responsive to execution of a computer program in a digital computer according to one embodiment comprises halting execution of the computer program, tracing the program's call stack to determine a series of stack frames resulting from execution of the program, capturing a selected metric with respect to each stack frame in the series, encoding each captured metric into a corresponding symbol, and assembling the series of encoded symbols into an ordered list thereby forming a stack frame signature that reflects generally the execution of the computer program.
Claims15
A method of forming a stack signature responsive to execution of a computer program in a digital computer, the method comprising the steps of:
- halting execution of the computer program;
- tracing the program's call stack to determine a series of stack frames resulting from execution of the program;
- capturing a selected metric with respect to each stack frame in the series;
- encoding each captured metric into a corresponding symbol;
- and
- assembling the series of encoded symbols into an ordered list thereby forming a stack frame signature that reflects generally the execution of the computer program.
A stack frame signature computer program encoded in machine-readable form for execution on a platform comprising:
- registry means for registering the stack frame signature program in an operating system so that the operating system will launch the stack frame signature program responsive to abnormal termination of an application program;
- means for tracing the application program's call stack to determine a series of stack frames resulting from execution of the application program up to the termination;
- means for collecting a size metric of each stack frame in the series;
- means for encoding each size metric into a corresponding symbol;
- and
- means for assembling the series of symbols so as to form a stack frame signature.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.