Trace Analysis Patterns (Part 121)
Saturday, January 30th, 2016Often, we need to identify the source of messages based on problem object or subsystem description (what question) before we proceed answering where question (where in the trace we can find messages related to the problem). Even when we know where are messages there can be many sources to select from (if we don’t know the where question we can use Indirect Message analysis pattern). To answer what question we propose Identification Messages analysis pattern. Basic Fact problem description may include properties and behavioural description of the problem object or subsystem. Based on that we can map them to the log messages that such an object can produce:
These messages may not be Error Messages or some other type of messages reflecting abnormal behavior. These messages are only used to identify the software object, module or subsystem.
For example, in one case there were problems with the custom status bar. However, the window handle for it or its parent wasn’t specified in the problem report. In the log file we had a lot of messages describing GUI behavior of many windows. To find out the status bar we thought that it should have small height but long width. Indeed we found one such child window. In addition, for this window the log file contained many messages related to frequent window text changes, possibly reflecting the status bar updates. Having identified the window handle, we proceeded to the analysis of another log with thousands of window messages. Because of the known window handle we were able to select only messages pertaining to our problem status bar.
- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -
