Archive for the ‘Software Narratology’ Category

Trace Analysis Patterns (Part 13)

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

What will you do confronted with a one million trace messages recorded between 10:44:15 and 10:46:55 with an average trace statement current of 7,000 msg/s from dozens of modules and having a one sentence problem description? One solution is to try to search for a specific vocabulary relevant to the problem description, for example, if a problem is an intermittent re-authentication then we might try to search for a word “password” or a similar one drawn from a troubleshooting domain vocabulary. So it is useful to have a Vocabulary Index to search for. Hence, the same name of this pattern. In our trace example, the search for “password” jumps straight to a small activity region of authorization modules starting from the message number #180,010 and the last “password” occurrence is in the message #180,490 that narrows initial analysis region to just 500 messages. Note the similarity here between a book and its index and a trace as a software narrative and its vocabulary index.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ TraceAnalysis.org -

Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 3

Sunday, December 20th, 2009

“Memory dumps are facts.”

I’m very excited to announce that Volume 3 is available in paperback, hardcover and digital editions:

Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 3

Table of Contents

In two weeks paperback edition should also appear on Amazon and other bookstores. Amazon hardcover edition is planned to be available in January 2010.

The amount of information was so voluminous that I had to split the originally planned volume into two. Volume 4 should appear by the middle of February together with Color Supplement for Volumes 1-4. 

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Forthcoming Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 3

Saturday, September 26th, 2009

This is a revised, edited, cross-referenced and thematically organized volume of selected DumpAnalysis.org blog posts about crash dump analysis and debugging written in October 2008 - June 2009 for software engineers developing and maintaining products on Windows platforms, quality assurance engineers testing software on Windows platforms and technical support and escalation engineers dealing with complex software issues. The third volume features:

- 15 new crash dump analysis patterns
- 29 new pattern interaction case studies
- Trace analysis patterns
- Updated checklist
- Fully cross-referenced with Volume 1 and Volume 2
- New appendixes

Product information:

  • Title: Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 3
  • Author: Dmitry Vostokov
  • Language: English
  • Product Dimensions: 22.86 x 15.24
  • Paperback: 404 pages
  • Publisher: Opentask (20 December 2009)
  • ISBN-13: 978-1-906717-43-8
  • Hardcover: 404 pages
  • Publisher: Opentask (30 January 2010)
  • ISBN-13: 978-1-906717-44-5

Back cover features 3D computer memory visualization image.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Software Narratology: A Definition

Friday, June 12th, 2009

Let’s define a software or computer narratology as an application of the theory and methods of literary narratology to the domain of software execution where software traces and logs are considered as a narrative, the story of a computation (*). As an example, we have the following correspondence between 4-tiers of literary and software narrative models:

Events            Instructions, statements, functions
History           Concrete execution path
Narrative         Software trace
Presentation      View (from a trace viewer)

(*) Please do not confuse software narratology with computational narratology.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ TraceAnalysis.org -