John E Whaley

US Patent:

6857120, Feb 15, 2005

Filed:

Nov 1, 2000

Appl. No.:

09/703530

Inventors:

Matthew R. Arnold - Ridgefield Park NJ, US
Stephen J. Fink - Yorktown Heights NY, US
David P. Grove - Ridgefield CT, US
Michael J. Hind - Cortlandt Manor NY, US
Peter F. Sweeney - Spring Valley NY, US
John Whaley - Stanford CA, US

Assignee:

International Business Machines Corporation - Armonk NY

International Classification:

G06F009/45

US Classification:

717157, 717127, 717131, 717133, 717153

Abstract:

A method for characterizing runtime behavior of a computer program executing in an execution environment comprising: generating a call stack runtime data structure for tracking methods currently active in an executing program thread, an active method on the call stack is represented by a frame; determining condition for sampling an executing program to determine current program behavior; and, upon determination of a sampling condition, the sampling including examining at least one frame in the call stack in response to evaluate context of one or more methods represented in the call stack, the at least one frame in the call stack providing context relating to an executing program's calling structure.