System and method for information extraction from within an active application during execution
A system and method for providing detailed information about how a software application is running has a processor and memory including a shared memory. The method provides an automated way of extracting information from a first software application having a plurality of libraries as the application executes. A special library used to interrogate an execution application is placed in the execution path but does not use I/O resources while it is extracting information about an executing software application. An intercept causes the special library to execute, and information is seamless provided to an output device during execution of the interrogated application.
1. In a computer system, having a processor and memory, a method of extracting information from a first software application within the memory having a plurality of libraries, as the first software application executes, comprising the ordered steps of:
a) configuring a dynamic loader to load one or more of the plurality of libraries and a first library into the memory, wherein the first library includes software for extracting the information;
b) causing the dynamic loader to load the one or more of the plurality of libraries and the first library into the memory;
c) using an intercept without using an interrupt so as to cause the instructions within the first library for extracting the information that were loaded into the memory to be inserted into an execution path of the first software application;
d) executing in user mode all instructions in the first library for extracting information, in the absence of executing any I/O instructions, and without locking or synchronization operations;
e) extracting the information while instructions within the first library are executing by placing the information into the memory; and,
f) exporting the information by using a second software application to distribute the information from the memory to another location.
2. A method as defined in claim 1 , wherein instructions executed within the first library related to extracting the information consume less than 5% of CPU resources available for the first software application to execute.
3. A method as defined in claim 1 , wherein memory that is allocated in dynamic fashion during the execution of the software within the first library is less than 500 hundred bytes.
4. A method as defined in claim 1 , wherein the step of exporting is performed while the first and second software applications are in a same run queue.
5. A method as defined in claim 4 , wherein information extracted from the first software application is organized by memory management software within the first library to accommodate extracted information which is of variable length to reside in a memory of a fixed size.
6. A method as defined in claim 5 , wherein the second software application extracts the information from the one or more shared memory segments so that the information is available for further processing.
7. A method as defined in claim 5 , wherein the first and second software application are in a same run queue.
8. A method as defined in claim 1 , wherein the first software application is comprised of processes that are loaded into the shared memory during execution of the first software application and wherein in step (c) the intercept causes instructions associated with the first application that would have been executed not to be executed until all instructions within the first library have been exectuted.
9. A method of extracting data from an executing software application without polling and in an aperiodic manner comprising: placing software instructions in the form of a library for extracting information in a shared memory space of the executing software application and using an intercept so as to execute said software instructions in the process of executing the software application while ensuring that I/O instructions are not performed in the process of executing all of the software instructions for extracting information, and displaying graphs compiled from information extracted by the software instructions which provide visual information related to the execution of the software application before the executing software application completes its execution.
10. A system for extracting information from an executing software application having a plurality of libraries running on a computer having a processor and memory that includes a shared memory, the system for extracting information comprising:
a) a loadable and readable software application characterizing library;
b) executable software instructions to configure a loader to load the software application characterizing library into the shared memory;
c) software for retrieving from the shared memory and for exporting the extracted information to another destination;
wherein the software application characterizing library has intercept logic, which does not use any interrupt, for causing functions within the software application characterizing library to execute before or after functions or instructions within the plurality libraries, and wherein the software application characterizing library has instructions to extract information related to the executing software application, and wherein the software application characterizing library has instructions for placing the extracted information into the shared memory, and wherein the software application characterizing library is absent any I/O instructions.
11. A system as defined in claim 10 , wherein the software application characterizing library; and the software instructions to configure the loader to load the software application characterizing library into the shared memory are stored in a recording medium.
12. A system as defined in claim 10 , wherein the software application characterizing library; and the software instructions to configure the loader to load the software application characterizing library into the shared memory reside on a server for transmission over the internet.
13. A system as defined in claim 10 , further comprising software for analyzing and graphing the extracted information stored in the other destination, wherein the graphical information depicts the software application as a collection of processes executing on plurality of servers.
14. A system as defined in claim 10 , wherein a plurality of processes running on plurality of servers are aggregated into single set of data.