Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Computer network managing – Computer network monitoring
Reexamination Certificate
1997-12-22
2001-09-04
Rinehart, Mark H. (Department: 2152)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Computer network managing
Computer network monitoring
C709S204000, C709S227000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06286046
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to communications within a client-server computer network and, in particular, to a method of recording and measuring information about a particular communication session between a client application and a server application.
2. Description of the Related Art
Doing business in an electronic manner is highly advantageous. An electronic business or so-called “e-business” is one that uses certain tools to connect its critical business systems directly to employees, customers, vendors and other important constituencies. An “intranet” is an e-business application deployed within a business. An “extranet” is an e-business application deployed within the larger community of a business, including its suppliers, vendors and contractors. Connecting either one to the Internet's World Wide Web makes the information it contains accessible from anywhere using conventional browser software.
A goal of e-business is to move online all processes that require a dynamic and interactive flow of information. These include, without limitation, service and support, managing supply chains, buying and selling, and the like. Examples of an e-business application include Internet banking or Internet retail sales.
Because an e-business application running on a Web server may have to support a large number of interactions in a given time period, measuring and tuning the performance of the application is an important goal. Similarly, because reliability and functional correctness of the e-business application are paramount, functional and system testing of the application are also important elements of the development process. Also, if an individual user of the e-business application encounters poor response time, it may be important from a customer service viewpoint to be able to quantify and measure the exact nature of the user's performance difficulty in order to resolve the problem. Such measurements should concentrate on the delay of the server as it interacts with the user as opposed to measuring performance characteristics of the client machine (e.g., how long it takes the browser to render the servers response on the client machine).
An important part of performance measurement and system testing of an e-business application is the problem of capturing a test workload. A test workload is a set of URL requests that take place between a client application and a e-business application during a simulated or “sample” interactive session involving the application. A test workload, theoretically, could be replayed to the server for performance measurement or functional testing purposes. The prior art, however, does not provide any adequate means or method of compiling such workload information. A possible solution is a manual “monitoring” technique, wherein one could just watch the URLs that the browser submits and copy these URLs down by hand in order to create a list of requests to the application (i.e. a “request list”). For most e-business applications, however, the URLs are complex and hard to read due to “URL encoding”. Copying the requests down by hand is thus extremely error prone for all but the simplest of e-business applications.
Thus, there remains a need to provide a technique to monitor and record information about specific requests to a server application, such as an e-business application, to thereby generate “workload” information that may then be used for later playback to benchmark the server application.
BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention provides a monitor tool that preferably sits between a Web browser and a server upon which a server application is running. The monitor tool is useful for recording a set of URLs (sometimes referred to as a “request list”) that issue from the Web browser during a sample interactive session between the user of the client machine and the server application. The URL request list trace or session “workload” may then be used to benchmark the server application by supplying the information as an input to a set of HTTP submitter routines. Each HTTP submitter routine simulates a particular user of a client machine connected to the server application. Each routine then “replays” the interactive session recorded by the monitor so that the overall performance of the server application against “multiple” simulated users may be evaluated.
The monitor tool is provisioned such that, from the browser's perspective, the tool appears to be the server itself; likewise, from the server's perspective, the tool appears to be the browser. Moreover, communications between the browser and the monitor are carried out in an unencrypted manner, although the monitor provides whatever secure connection (e.g., a secure sockets layer (“SSL”) connection) that is expected or may be required with respect to the communications to and from the server. The monitor further includes a link substitution algorithm that prevents the browser from escaping from the connection to the monitor. In addition, the monitor tool may also be used to measure response times associated with the interactive session.
The foregoing has outlined some of the more pertinent objects and features of the present invention. These objects should be construed to be merely illustrative of some of the more prominent features and applications of the invention. Many other beneficial results can be attained by applying the disclosed invention in a different manner or modifying the invention as will be described. Accordingly, other objects and a fuller understanding of the invention may be had by referring to the following Detailed Description of the Preferred Embodiment.
REFERENCES:
patent: 4462077 (1984-07-01), York
patent: 5347649 (1994-09-01), Alderson
patent: 5678002 (1997-10-01), Fawcett et al.
patent: 5742762 (1998-04-01), Scholl et al.
patent: 5931904 (1999-08-01), Banga et al.
patent: 5933827 (1999-08-01), Cole et al.
patent: 5948066 (1999-09-01), Whalen et al.
patent: 6070184 (2000-05-01), Blount et al.
Ross, K.W., “Hash routing for collections of shared Web caches”, IEEE Network, vol. 11, Issue 6, pp. 37-44, Nov. 1997.*
Tattam, Peter R., “Trumpet Winsock, Version 2.0”, Trumpet Software International Pty Ltd., p. 34, 1993.
Burwell Joseph R.
International Business Machines - Corporation
Judson David H.
Labace Jeffrey S.
Rinehart Mark H.
LandOfFree
Method of recording and measuring e-business sessions on the... does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with Method of recording and measuring e-business sessions on the..., we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Method of recording and measuring e-business sessions on the... will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-2461493