Correlating Test Steps with Diagnostic Events for Software Fault Diagnosis
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Solution Overview
Problem
Quality assurance (QA) programs for application software often fail to detect all errors that can impact user experience, as they cannot collect sufficient information before a failure occurs in the field, leading to difficulties in diagnosing faults.
Innovation Solution
A QA system that correlates QA test steps with non-fault diagnostic events, using a test generator, failure-event detector, and failure-and-diagnostic-event correlator to generate a test log, providing a user interface for visualizing correlations between test steps and events, and includes diagnostic-event generators to detect and log events that may indicate potential issues.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If QA programs only use traditional testing methods, then the testing process remains simple, but errors impacting user experience cannot be fully detected
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines traditional QA testing with diagnostic event logging systems to create an integrated testing framework. The test generator correlates test steps with diagnostic events, merging functional testing with diagnostic data collection to enhance error detection without requiring separate systems
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary diagnostic event logging throughout the application's operation, capturing diagnostic data before failures occur. This allows the system to have diagnostic information ready when testing occurs, improving reliability by having pre-collected evidence of system state
2Loss of information
If diagnostic events are logged continuously, then more data is available for fault diagnosis, but data storage and processing requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts and logs only relevant diagnostic events that are correlated with test steps, rather than continuously logging all possible events. The correlator identifies and extracts meaningful diagnostic data points, reducing unnecessary data storage while maintaining diagnostic information availability
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies local quality by making the logging behavior context-dependent. Diagnostic events are logged selectively based on their relevance to current test steps, with different logging thresholds applied to different event types based on their diagnostic value
3Measurement precision
If QA testing is performed rigorously with full correlation of test steps and diagnostic events, then fault diagnosis capability improves, but testing time and computational resources increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs partial correlation of test steps with diagnostic events, focusing on the most relevant correlations rather than exhaustive analysis of all possible combinations. This provides sufficient diagnostic precision for fault identification without the computational overhead of complete correlation
Data Source
AI summary
A quality assurance system has a test generator for applying tests to an application program and a correlator for logging events that occur during testing in correlation with test steps so as to generate a test log. The quality assurance program has a user interface for providing an interactive presentation displaying a list of events and a list of test steps such that: 1) selecting a test step will cause a correlated event to be highlighted, and 2) selecting an event will cause a correlated test step to be highlighted.