Trace Analysis Patterns (Part 216)
Message data may point to other messages in the same trace (see the example of Linked Messages) or in the other trace (see the Data Selector example). But similar data in other messages may not point to any other messages in the same or other, perhaps Truncated, traces and logs collected at the same time - similar to invalid pointers, for example, kernel addresses in process memory dumps or user space addresses in kernel memory dumps. We call this analysis pattern Null Reference (also notice the analogy with foreign key values in data tables where Null is not a value). Another analogy here is referential failure. This is illustrated in the following diagram adapted from Linked Messages analysis pattern diagram.
This analysis pattern is different from Missing Data where the reference is itself missing.
These Null References can be remediated by longer supplemental traces, Fiber Bundle, and Adjoint Spaces.
- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -