Transaction Token Monitoring for Software CPU Overhead Reduction
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing monitoring methods for software applications incur significant overhead and generate excessive data, as they typically monitor all transactions equally, leading to unnecessary CPU usage and obscuring the root cause of performance issues.
Innovation Solution
Each transaction in an instrumented software application is associated with a token containing its specific monitoring configuration, allowing selective monitoring based on user-defined policies, thereby optimizing data collection and reducing overhead.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If all transactions in an application are monitored to identify performance problems, then the root cause can be pinpointed, but the CPU usage and memory overhead increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the monitoring scope from application-wide to transaction-specific by introducing transaction identifiers and configuration tokens. Each transaction is independently configured to determine whether it should be monitored, allowing the system to divide monitoring resources selectively across different transactions rather than uniformly monitoring all transactions.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements local quality by allowing different monitoring configurations for different transactions within the same application. Through transaction-specific configuration tokens and policies, each transaction can have its own monitoring parameters, enabling the system to apply monitoring only where necessary rather than uniformly across the entire application.
2Loss of information
If all transactions are monitored at the same level, then comprehensive data is collected, but the accumulated data volume becomes very high and obscures the root cause
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies partial action by monitoring only the necessary portion of transactions rather than all transactions. Through configuration tokens and policies, the system selectively enables monitoring for specific transactions that are relevant to performance problems, collecting sufficient information to identify root causes without the overhead of comprehensive monitoring.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments monitoring data collection by transaction type and configuration, allowing the system to gather detailed information only for relevant transactions while collecting minimal or no data from irrelevant transactions. This segmentation prevents data volume accumulation from unnecessary transactions while maintaining information completeness for problem diagnosis.
3Reliability
If monitoring is enabled for an entire application, then all business transactions are monitored, but this incurs more overhead than necessary to solve the problem
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces dynamic monitoring configuration through tokens and policies that can be adjusted without modifying the application code. The monitoring behavior changes dynamically based on transaction-specific configurations, allowing the system to optimize between monitoring coverage and performance impact by enabling or disabling monitoring for specific transactions as needed.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the monitoring parameters from a fixed application-wide setting to variable transaction-specific settings. Through configuration tokens containing monitoring parameters and policies, the system can adjust monitoring intensity, data collection frequency, and reporting levels for each transaction, optimizing the balance between monitoring effectiveness and system performance.
Data Source
AI summary
A system and method to allow an individual transaction in an instrumented software application to be monitored according to its own configuration. In one preferred embodiment, each transaction is associated with a token. The token includes the monitoring configuration that should be used for the associated transaction. When the application entry point is reached for the transaction, the token is looked up and retrieved, and the monitoring policy configuration of the token determines what data is gathered about the transaction.