OS-Based Application State Recovery Mechanism
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Solution Overview
Problem
Users often experience data loss and inconvenience due to application failures, which can be attributed to application errors, and not all applications have a self-recovery feature to revert to a previous stable state.
Innovation Solution
An operating system-based application recovery system that automatically saves application states at fixed intervals or user-directed times, allowing users to revert to a previous state upon application failure, supporting both applications with and without self-recovery features.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If applications implement self-recovery features, then application reliability is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The operating system serves as an intermediary that implements the recovery mechanism centrally, allowing individual applications to benefit from reliability improvements without each application needing to implement its own complex self-recovery logic. The OS monitors application states and executes recovery actions uniformly across all applications.
Solution Approach 2:
The recovery mechanism is implemented as a universal operating system feature that serves all applications regardless of whether they have their own self-recovery capabilities. This single universal mechanism replaces the need for multiple application-specific recovery implementations.
2Reliability
If application states are saved frequently, then recovery reliability is improved, but loss of time increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements periodic saving of application states at predetermined intervals, creating a balance between having recent restore points (improving reliability) and not saving so frequently that the latest state is too old (reducing time loss). This periodic approach optimizes the trade-off between these two parameters.
3Productivity
If application states are saved at fixed intervals, then productivity is improved, but loss of time increases
Solution Approach 1:
By saving application states periodically at fixed intervals rather than continuously, the system maintains productivity by limiting the frequency of save operations while still providing adequate recovery points. This periodic approach reduces the total time spent on saving operations compared to continuous saving.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods, systems, and computer-readable media are disclosed for operating system-based application recovery. A particular method saves an application state of an application executing at a computer. When a failure of the application is detected, the operating system provides an option to initiate recovery of the application by reverting to the saved application state. When the option to initiate recovery is selected by a user of the computer, the operating system recovers the application by reverting to the saved application state.