Methods of Generating and Retrieving Error and Task Message Records Within a Multitasking Computer System

1. Technical Field

This invention relates generally to problem determination, and more particularly to methods of retrieving data records to assist in determining problems in a computer system in an accurate and user friendly manner.

2. Background Information

Communication software program executing on a computer system may log error data or messages which occurred as a result of some software component failure or the unavailability of some function. Error data or messages in such a communication system typically is generated by a plurality of components within the system. If an error or message occurred, and the user wanted to display the contents thereof, the user may have to decipher large amounts of error data.

Consequently, there is a need for a method which enables the average user to retrieve specific errors and or messages from a communication software system in a user friendly manner.

This invention relates to methods of retrieving data from a communication software system operating on a computer system. One of a plurality of problem determination functions is selected. Parameters are entered for the selected one of the plurality of functions. An error record or message is then retrieved from the selected problem determination function in the communication software system which matches the specified parameters.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a computer system on which the method of the present invention may be employed.

FIG. 2 is a flow diagram illustrating the detailed steps of the method of the present invention.

FIGS. 3 through 10 are display screen which are employed by user of the computer system in retrieving records from a communication software system .

Referring to FIG. 1, there is shown a computer system 10 on which the present invention may be employed. System 10 includes a central processing unit 12 having a microprocessor 14, a memory system 16 and a control system 18 which functions to control input/output operations in addition to the interaction between the microprocessor and the memory system. System 10 also includes a group of conventional peripheral units including a display device 20, a keyboard 22, a printer 24, a data storage unit 26 and a modem 28. Since the details of the above described functional systems form no part of the present invention and can be found in the prior art, only a brief functional description of each of the systems will be set forth.

The central processing unit 12 corresponds to the "system unit" of a personal computer system such as the IBM XT or the IBM AT or the IBM Personal Systems/2 computer systems. The central processing unit 12 is provided with a multitasking operating system program such as the IBM Operating System/2 which is normally employed to run the systems. The operating system program is stored in memory system 16 along with one or more application programs that the user has selected to run. Depending on the capacity of the memory system 16 and the size of the application programs, portions of these programs, as needed, may be transferred to the memory system 16 from the data storage unit 26 which may include, for example, a hard disk drive and a diskette drive. The basic function of the data storage unit 26 is to store programs and data which are employed by the system 10 and which may readily be transferred to the memory system 16 when needed. The function of the diskette drive is to provide a removable storage function for entering programs and data into the system, and a vehicle for storing data in a form that is readily transportable for use on other computer systems.

Display device 20 and keyboard 22 together provide for an interactive operation of the computer system 10 wherein the interpretation that the computer system gives to a specific keystroke by the user depends, in substantially all situations, on what is being displayed to the user at that point in time.

In certain situations, the user, by entering commands into the computer system 10, causes the system to perform a certain function. In other situations, the computer system 10 requests the entry of certain data, generally by displaying a prompt type of menu/message screen. The depth of the interaction between the user and the computer system 10 varies by the type of operating system and the application program, but is a necessary characteristic of the computer systems on which the method of the present invention may be employed.

As noted above, computer system 10 includes the printer 24 which functions to provide a hard copy output of data developed or stored in the computer system. The modem 28 functions to transfer data from the computer system 10 to a remote host system or server system through one or more communication links which may be a commercial type link or a dedicated communications link.

System 10 includes a communication software system stored in the memory system 16 thereof which enables an end user of system 10 to perform various communication tasks within the operating system. The communication software system includes a problem determination program which enables the user to request the display of specific errors or messages generated by a specific component of a communication software system. Moreover, the problem determination program enables the user to request all of the errors or messages generated by a specific component of the communication software system. Messages present user friendly text to the user which sets forth the cause of any interruption of the execution of a process or task within the software system. Error data also presents technical information, which is typically in hexadecimal representation, to the user in a friendly manner. These requests become extremely important in a multitasking environment wherein the user may activate a first task, then goes on during the execution of the first task to activate or monitor a second task. If during the time the user is activating or monitoring the second task, the first task fails. The user generally is unaware of the failure of the first task until the user decides to return to the first task. The preferred embodiment of the present invention displays a message to the user irrespective of which task the user is presently activating or monitoring. The user may then access a message log or error log for more information. The user may request more detailed information after viewing the message log.

The end user of system 10, after activating the problem determination program, may activate message service utilities or error log service utilities program. The error log service utilities provide a common interface for logging and presenting error data. The error data is typically generated as a result of a communication adapter or communication link type errors occurring at a data link controller (DLC) level. The error data facilitates the management of a communication network and provides the necessary data for problem determination in the event of a network failure. Once the error data is stored in a log, the error log service utility allows the data to be printed or visually displayed. In the preferred embodiment of this invention, all error data is stored in a file or log which is created when the operating system executing on system 10 was configured.

The message service utilities provide an interface for displaying and logging messages within the operating system. Primarily, the message service utilities provide a mechanism for relaying message information to the user which may not be related to current screen activity being viewed by the user. The message service utilities log all messages to a log to provide a history of the messages which have been generated by the various components within the operating system. This history is very useful in problem determination in that it provides a sequence of errors which led to a particular failure of the communication system.

Within the communication software system, the actions of the various components thereof may facilitate the generation of error data and/or messages. The various components or the actions thereof are referred to as originators within the problem determination program environment. For purposes of illustration and not limitation, an originator of a message or error may be the failure of a file transfer, a data link being prematurely terminated, or a terminal emulation failure.

Set out below is an illustration of the problem determination program for determining a failure within the software communication program. The problem determination program is in program design language from which source code and machine code are derivable. In the following general description of the problem determination program, it is to be assumed that system 10 is under mouse and keyboard device control. Moreover, it is assumed that the problem determination program is invoked from a driver program contained in the operating system which facilitates the display of all of the screen panels and the monitoring of the keyboard 22.

The print subroutine is called by the ERROR LOG SERVICES program. A print criteria panel is displayed which allows the user to enter specific search parameters. These search parameters facilitate the printing of a record which contains errors matching the specified parameters.

The display subroutine is called by the ERROR LOG SERVICES program. A display criteria panel is displayed which allows the user to enter specific search parameters. These search parameters facilitate the display of a record which only contains errors matching the specified parameters.

The display subroutine is called by ERROR LOG SERVICES program and facilitates the display of an error log display criteria panel. The user then enters the required search parameters. The display subroutine then search the appropriate error log record for the errors which match the search parameters. Thereafter, the record is formatted and displayed to the user. The user after the record is displayed, may scroll through the file by activating the appropriate function keys.

Referring to FIG. 2, there is shown a flow diagram for the problem determination program. After invoking the problem determination program in step 45, the user selects one of a plurality of problem determination utilities, such as the error log services or the message services. Step 47 determines whether the error services utility was selected. Step 48 determines whether the message services was selected. If the error log services was selected, control is transferred from step 47 to step 50. In step 50, the user selects either a print function or a display function from the error log services panel. The error log services panel also displays a default error log name to be used with the selected function. If the print function is selected, the print criteria panel is displayed in step 52 wherein the user enters the desired search parameters. The search parameters include a starting and ending dates and times and an error log type. If the user specifies the starting date and time, the first error log entry printed will be on or after the date/time specified. However, if the user leaves the starting date and time fields blank, the print subroutine begins printing with the oldest error log record. If the log type specified is an entry other than "0000", only the error log entries of the specified type will be selected to be printed. In step 54, the print subroutine reads a record from the selected error log. A determination is made in step 56 whether the record matches the search parameters. If the record does not match the search parameters, a file pointer is moved to the next subsequent record in step 58. However, if the record matches the search parameters, the record is formatted and printed in step 60. Step 62 determines whether the end of the file has been reached, if not the next record is read and the comparison is made for a match, otherwise, control is returned to step 52.

If the display subroutine was selected in step 50, a display criteria panel is displayed to the user in step 70. The user then enters the appropriate search parameters which includes specifying a log name, if it is different from the default name displayed in the panel, an error log record type, and from date and time. If the user fails to enter a from date and a from time and the log type is "0000", the oldest error log is displayed and the entire specified error log will be available for display. If the entry for the log type an entry other than "0000", and the from date and time are specified, the first error log record displayed will be on or after the date/time specified and only the error log records of the specified type will be available for display. If the log type is an entry other than "0000" and the date and time are left blank, the first error log record displayed will be the oldest error log record for the specified type and only the error log records of the specified type will be available for display. Thus, step 72 reads a record from the file selected. A comparison is made in step 74 to determine whether the record matched the search parameters. If the record matches the search parameters, a determination is made in step 76 whether a file pointer is at the top of the file. Step 78 disables a backward key if the pointer is at the top of the file. A determination is made in step 80 to determine if the pointer is at the bottom of the selected file. Step 82 disables the forward key if the pointer is at the bottom of the file. In step 84, the record is formatted and displayed to the user. In step 86 a determination is made whether a message is being displayed. Since the user selected the error services in step 46, control is transferred to step 92. In step 92, a determination is made whether an escape key was activated. Control is returned to step 70, if the escape key is activated. Otherwise, step 94 determines whether the forward or backward key was activated. In step 96, if the backward key was activated, the pointer is moved to the immediately previous record which is then read and displayed if the record matches the search parameters. In step 98, if the forward key was activated, the pointer is moved to the immediately subsequent record which is then read and displayed if the record matches the search parameters. The procedure which includes steps 72 through 86 and 92 through 98 are repeated until the escape key is activated and detected in step 92.

If the message services was selected in step 47, control is transferred from step 48 to step 70. Steps 70 through 86 are identical to those described for the display function of the error services utility noted above. However, since the message services were selected in step 47, the type parameter will be replaced with an originator parameter. The originator identifies the component that generated the message and the record displayed will represent a message. Thus, control is transferred from step 86 to step 88. Step 88 determines whether the user has activated a help function. This activity indicates that the user in viewing a selected message record is requesting more detail information regarding the displayed message record. The additional information is displayed to the user in step 90 and control is returned to step 84. The system 10 will continue to display the additional information until the user activates either the backward key, the forward key or the escape key. Thereafter steps 86, and 92 through 98 are executed in the same manner described for the display function explained above for the error services utility.

Shown in FIG. 3 is a error log services panel. This panel is displayed to the user after the error services utility is selected and allows the user to select the type of error log processing desired. The log may be printed on printer 24 (FIG. 1) or displayed on the display 20 (FIG. 1). Upon selection of one of the processing options, an error log display criteria pop-up panel, shown in FIG. 4, is displayed which allows the user to enter specific criteria for the records to be processed. The error log display criteria pop-up panel which is displayed to the user upon the selection of the display processing option. The criteria includes at least the error log record type and the time and/or the date associated with the record to be displayed. If the user desires to display an error log file other than the one currently being used, the user enters the desired error log file in the log name entry field. The criteria fields provide the user with a mechanism for specifying a starting point, from date and/or from time, and a filter, log type for the type of error the user desires to view. If the user fails to specify any criteria, which means that the date and time fields are blank and the log type is equal to "0000", the oldest error log record will be displayed which contains any type of error. If the log type is specified only, the records of the specified type will be available for display. Shown in FIG. 5 is a error log display panel which is displayed in response to the processing of the error log display criteria panel (FIG. 4). The panel includes all of the specified errors, if any, which occurred on or after the specified date and time, if specified. The "h letters" appearing in the panel indicate that the data is to be interpreted as hexadecimal and the "x letters" indicate the data is to be interpreted as ASCII. Once a record has been displayed, the user may be scroll in a forward direction or in a backward direction starting with the specified date and time to display a next or previous entries of the error log which satisfy the criteria.

If the user selects the print processing function for the error services, an error log print criteria pop-up panel shown in FIG. 6 will be displayed to the user. This panel allows the user to enter specific criteria for selecting error log records to be printed. The criteria may include the error log record type and the time and/or date associated with the record. The user may also enter the name of an error log file other than the one currently being used. If no criteria are specified, all error log records of all types will be printed in chronological order. If the log type is specified, only the error log records of the specified type will be printed. FIG. 7 shows an example of an error log printout.

If the user selected the messages service, a display messages panel shown in FIG. 8 will be displayed to the user. The criteria fields on the panel allow the user to provide specific selection criteria for the messages to be displayed. The criteria includes a message originator, message date, and message time. The user may request that system 10 (FIG. 1) display a list of the originators, as shown in FIG. 9, which may be entered in the originator field. If no criteria is specified, the most recent messages from any originator will be displayed in chronological order with the latest message at the bottom of the display screen. If only the originator is specified, only those messages from the specified originator will be displayed. If only the time and date are specified, the first message displayed will be of any originator chronologically following the specified time and date. From this point, any messages of any originator with any time or date will be available for display. The date and time entries are primarily used to correlate a message with an associated error log entry. FIG. 10 shows a message log display panel which is displayed to the user subsequent to the processing of the display message panel (FIG. 8). In the event that there are more messages than are displayed, the user may page forward and backward to permit all of the selected messages to be viewed.

While the invention has been particularly shown and described with reference to a preferred embodiment, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that various changes in form and detail may be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.