Trace Analysis Patterns (Part 27)
Like in a literature (and in a narratology in general) we have components that trace themselves and components that tell the story of a computation including status updates they query about other components and subsystems. This pattern gets its name Diegetic Messages from diegesis. Here’s the difference between diegetic (in blue bold) and non-diegetic trace messages:
PID TID TIME MESSAGE
11864 11912 06:34:53.598 ModuleA: foo called bar. Status OK.
11620 10372 06:34:59.754 ModuleB: ModuleA integrity check. Status OK.
Some modules may emit messages that tell about their status but from their message text we know the larger computation story like in a process startup sequence example.
- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -
May 20th, 2013 at 11:53 am
Also compare messages from Process Monitor about system activity that are diegetic. Another way is to differentiate between external and internal tracing.