Stack Trace Search System for Debugging
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Solution Overview
Problem
Programmers face difficulties in understanding stack traces, as they often include large amounts of irrelevant or common data, making it hard to identify specific errors and find relevant information for debugging.
Innovation Solution
An error management system that parses stack traces to identify valuable terms and phrases, removes irrelevant data, and searches a class mapping table and error discussion database to provide prioritized search results, allowing users to access relevant source code and user-generated postings.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If a stack trace includes complete execution information, then debugging accuracy is improved, but information complexity increases making it difficult to understand
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the stack trace information by identifying and separating relevant error-causing frames from irrelevant common frames. The system divides the complete stack trace into meaningful portions, presenting only the segments that are actually useful for debugging the specific error, thereby reducing information complexity while preserving debugging accuracy.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts and removes common, irrelevant frames from the stack trace that do not contribute to understanding the specific error. By taking out these redundant elements (such as standard library calls or common framework methods), the system reduces the overall complexity of the information presented to the programmer while maintaining the essential debugging information.
2Reliability
If a stack trace includes all execution frames, then error identification completeness is improved, but search efficiency deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by pre-processing the stack trace to identify and remove common frames before the programmer needs to search for error information. This advance filtering action reduces the search space, allowing programmers to quickly locate relevant error information without wading through irrelevant common frames, thereby improving search efficiency while maintaining error identification completeness.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary processing layer that acts as a mediator between the complete stack trace and the programmer. This intermediary system automatically filters, prioritizes, and presents only the relevant error-causing frames, eliminating the need for programmers to manually search through all execution frames while ensuring that no critical error information is lost.
3Loss of information
If a stack trace shows detailed call information, then debugging information completeness is improved, but time to analyze the error increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by providing different levels of information detail in different parts of the error presentation. Critical error-causing frames are presented with full detail and prominence, while common non-critical frames are minimized or omitted. This localized differentiation of information quality allows programmers to quickly grasp the essential error information without spending time analyzing irrelevant detailed information from common frames.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent employs partial action by selectively including only the necessary portion of stack trace information required for debugging the specific error. Rather than presenting the complete stack trace with all its details, the system includes just enough information (the error-causing frames and their immediate context) to enable effective debugging, thereby reducing analysis time while maintaining information completeness for the critical elements.
Data Source
AI summary
An error management system can provide search results based on a received stack trace. For example, the error management system receives, from a client device, a search query including a stack trace. The error management system parses the search query to identify at least a first class and one or more errors associated with the first class, yielding a parsed search query. The error management system searches a class mapping table based on the parsed search query. The class mapping table includes a listing of classes and corresponding links to source code. The error management system searches an error discussion database based on the parsed search query. The error discussion database includes one or more user generated postings regarding programming errors. The error management system provides, to the client device, search results resulting from searching the class mapping table and the error discussion database.