Preemptive trouble shooting using dialog manager

A computer readable storage medium storing a program of instructions executable by a machine to perform a method of discovering problems in an application executing on a computing environment, the method performed by one or more processors, the method comprising:

• retrieving runtime execution information from an application executing on one or more computers;
• transforming the runtime information into a temporal sequence of events;
• determining that the temporal sequence of events is associated with a proven problem by comparing the temporal sequence of events with a database of historical problems;
• searching a knowledgebase for a dialog that has nodes in an order that match the temporal sequence of events according to a threshold degree;
• responsive to finding the dialog in the knowledgebase, launching the dialog on a user interface to interact with a user and guide the user through a problem identification and solution;
• and
• responsive to not finding the dialog, enabling additional instrumenter in the application executing on one or more computers to retrieve additional runtime execution information.

The computer readable storage medium of 8, wherein the knowledgebase is generated by:

• retrieving an existing dialog from a dialog knowledgebase;
• for each node in the dialog, tagging the node with one or more of an associated instrumenter or screen snapshot, based on topic matching between content of the node and one or more of content of the instrumenter's output or screen snapshot;
• and
• storing associations between the nodes of the existing dialog and one or more of instrumenters and screen snapshots.

A system of discovering problems in an application executing on a computing environment, comprising:

• a hardware processor;
• a trouble shooter server running on the hardware processor, the trouble shooter server operable to retrieve runtime execution information from an application executing on one or more computers,
• the trouble shooter server further operable to transform the runtime information into a temporal sequence of events,
• the trouble shooter server further operable to determine that the temporal sequence of events is associated with a proven problem by comparing the temporal sequence of events with a database of historical problems,
• the trouble shooter server further operable to search a knowledgebase for a dialog that has nodes in an order that match the temporal sequence of events according to a threshold degree;
• responsive to finding the dialog in the knowledgebase, the trouble shooter server further operable to direct launching of the dialog on a user interface to interact with a user and guide the user through a problem identification and solution;
• and
• responsive to not finding the dialog, the trouble shooter server operable to enable additional instrumenter in the application executing on one or more computers to retrieve additional runtime execution information.