Archive for March, 2025

Trace Analysis Patterns (Part 251)

Friday, March 28th, 2025

Trace Precision and Recall analysis patterns are borrowed from information retrieval and machine learning. In essence, Trace Precision is the fraction of trace messages used for successful diagnostics among all selected trace messages, for example, among CoTrace messages to reduce the noise. Trace Recall is the fraction of trace messages used for successful diagnostics among all relevant messages (these can also be messages not included in the trace, see Trace Bias).

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

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Trace Analysis Patterns (Part 250)

Tuesday, March 18th, 2025

Traces and logs can be considered models of computation as was first proposed in Trace Bias analysis pattern. Borrowing metaphors from machine learning we can consider trace messages as Trace Parameters having associated values, for example, through Trace Field. These values can be numerical weights or linguistic values, for example, as proposed by Zadeh. Message values can be field values themselves, for example, Counter Values. As was noted in Trace Variance, different tracing environments with their set of “features” can be considered input data. if we use an artificial neural network metaphor, trace analysis itself can be considered as an activation function. CoTraces, as models of trace analysis, may form other “hidden” layers with “backpropagation” updating message weights. Tracing configuration parameters including Trace Schemas can be considered as Trace Hyperparameters. These concepts can be roughly illustrated by the following diagram:

To reduce the number of Trace Parameters we can use Quotient Traces.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

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Trace Analysis Patterns (Part 249)

Sunday, March 16th, 2025

In some cases, when we have two trace messages we can infer the missing Implicit Message. This trace augmentation may help when we Sparse Traces and we want to train ML models on them. To illustrate, we asked ChatGPT:

We have a log file with two messages: 1. Reading file test.txt 2. Access denied. There is an implicit message in between.

The implicit message between the two log entries is:

“Attempting to open file ‘test.txt’.”

Reasoning:

  1. “Reading file test.txt” → This suggests that the system or user has issued a command to read the file.
  2. Implicit step (not logged explicitly) → The system attempts to open the file to read its contents.
  3. “Access denied.” → The attempt fails due to permission restrictions or security policies.

Thus, the missing step is the system trying to open or access the file, which leads to the access denial.

Implicit Messages are different from Silent Messages which are padding messages to occupy the minimum resolution gaps.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

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