Business Object Cloning for Incident Simulation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current software support solutions are labor-intensive and require manual recreation of errors, which can be time-consuming and inefficient, especially for severe errors like program termination errors that necessitate simulation in a non-production environment.
Innovation Solution
The software receives error information and dynamic context from a remote business application, clones relevant business objects, and starts a transaction simulating the incident, allowing for a debugging session to trace code across all levels of the software stack without needing direct access to the client system.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If manual error analysis and debugging is performed by support technicians, then detailed troubleshooting can be conducted, but the process becomes labor-intensive and time-consuming
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a copy of the production work environment including business objects, data, and system state in a support system. This copy allows technicians to reproduce and analyze errors without accessing the actual production system, significantly reducing support time while maintaining debugging accuracy through faithful replication of the original environment.
Solution Approach 2:
The system automatically captures and preserves the work environment state at the time of error occurrence before any debugging actions are taken. This preliminary action of saving the system state includes business objects, data values, and configuration settings, enabling subsequent analysis without needing to recreate the exact conditions manually.
2Measurement precision
If support technicians access the customer's production system to debug errors, then real-time analysis is possible, but it may affect system stability and requires customer system access
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the essential debugging components (business objects, data, system state) from the production environment and transfers them to a separate support system. This extraction allows complete error analysis in isolation, eliminating any risk to production system stability while maintaining analysis accuracy through faithful replication of the extracted elements.
Solution Approach 2:
The support system acts as an intermediary between the technician and the production system. Instead of direct access to production, technicians interact with the cloned environment, which mediates all debugging activities. This intermediary layer protects the production system from any potential disruptions while enabling thorough analysis.
3Measurement precision
If complete production environment copies are created for debugging, then accurate error reproduction is achieved, but system complexity and resource requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the production environment into discrete, manageable components including individual business objects, data sets, and configuration parameters. Rather than copying the entire system monolithically, each component is extracted and replicated separately, reducing the complexity of the support system while maintaining the accuracy needed for error reproduction.
Solution Approach 2:
The support system implements local quality by replicating only the specific portions of the production environment that are relevant to the error being analyzed. Instead of creating a complete duplicate of the entire production system, only the necessary business objects, data, and configurations related to the incident are cloned, reducing overall system complexity.
Data Source
AI summary
This disclosure describes software for supporting an application. In one aspect, software for supporting a business application receives error and dynamic context information from a remote business application in response to an incident. The dynamic context information at least partially identifies one or more business objects (BOs) associated with the incident. The software is further operable to clone at least one of the BOs associated with the incident. The software can then start a transaction simulating the incident. Conversely, the business application (or other supported software) can transmit error and dynamic context information to support software related to an incident within having a particular execution environment. In response to an automated request from the support software executing a simulated transaction simulating the incident, the supported software communicates a clone of one of the associated BOs to the support software. Alternatively, the software re-directs service calls instead of cloning BOs.