Data processing: software development – installation – and managem – Software program development tool – Translation of code
Reexamination Certificate
1998-09-24
2001-09-11
Powell, Mark R. (Department: 2122)
Data processing: software development, installation, and managem
Software program development tool
Translation of code
C717S152000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06289503
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates in general to data processing systems, and in particular, to programming for data processing systems.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Today's real-world computing environments consist of many different and often incompatible hardware systems, operating systems and product versions running on client/server networks. As a result, Management Information Systems (MIS) professionals face daunting obstacles in deploying, updating and maintaining applications on all the clients and servers across their enterprises. JavaOS has been designed to help overcome these obstacles.
JavaOS is a software platform that enables Java applications to run directly on hardware without requiring a host operating system. JavaOS includes the Java Virtual Machine, the standard packages of classes, and enough operating system (“OS”) code to support them. The OS code includes low-level code written in C or assembly language, plus device driver, networking, windowing, and graphics-rendering code mostly written in the Java programming language.
One application for JavaOS is to run Java programs on a variety of computing and consumer platforms. JavaOS is an operating system programmed as an object. JavaOS has been designed specifically to support Java and Java applets without having to provide backward compatibility with other legacy applications. This approach improves performance by eliminating needless layers of software and enabling the operating system to run in minimal memory configurations.
Despite all the advantages of JavaOS, there still is a need to analyze or debug programs generated in JavaOS. As with other program execution environments, one of the most common methods for debugging a program is to implement a trace program. Trace files generated from a JavaOS client are often analyzed using information that is available from the build image containing symbolic data regarding the C and the similar functions in the Java classes and their methods. The symbolic image is stripped in order to have the client load a small image. The problem is that there is an exposure for the end-user to use the wrong symbolic image with the generated trace file and thereby receive incorrect results. A variation of this problem occurs when a trace file is available and a user is not confident against which image the trace was generated.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention addresses the foregoing need by ensuring that the trace file is analyzed using the correct symbolic image. This is implemented by generating a date/time stamp as part of the build process to be used to validate that the trace file and the symbolic image correspond to each other.
In one embodiment of the present invention, a build identifier is updated with an updated date/time stamp and version number. The process then builds the program to be traced and the build identifier is placed into the symbol file. The object code of the program is then installed into a designated machine. A trace is initiated against this program collecting data regarding specified events occurring within the program. The build identifier is captured and placed into the raw file produced by the trace program. A comparison is then made between the build identifier in the raw file and the build identifier within the symbol file. If there is a match, post-processing of the trace data is continued.
The foregoing has outlined rather broadly the features and technical advantages of the present invention in order that the detailed description of the invention that follows may be better understood. Additional features and advantages of the invention will be described hereinafter which form the subject of the claims of the invention.
The present invention is applicable to any situation where data collected from an executing system (or object) image needs to be compared to a static copy of that same image.
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JavaOS(tm): A Standalone Java(tm) Environment, available via the Internet at http://www.java.sun.com/products/javaos/javaos.white.html, copy printed Aug. 11, 1998, pp. 1-14.
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Berry Robert Francis
Hussain Riaz Y.
John, Jr. Chester Charles
Levine Frank Eliot
International Business Machines - Corporation
Kordzik Kelly K.
LaBaw Jeffrey S.
Nguyen-Ba Hoang-Vu Antony
Powell Mark R.
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