Early warning mechanism for enhancing enterprise availability

摘要

A computer method for issuing an early warning includes determining, using change and test coverage and control flow and data flow analyses of a program, locations in the program at which to insert early warning (EW) code to monitor for an event. The program is instrumented with EW code which monitors for the event, by inserting EW code at the determined locations. Upon detecting the event, EW code performs an early action warning, or issues an early action. Early warnings are issued when an EW-instrumented block is reached. Issuance of an early warning action can be conditional upon execution of the program in a particular environment, such as a production environment. Issuance of an EW can also be conditional upon executing an untested block of code that was recently modified. The issuing of an early warning can include sending an email, writing into a log file, sending a message to a console, where the message causes the change of a human-perceptible characteristic, placing the program into a wait state, halting the program, sending an alarm to an operator, or triggering a failover. In some embodiments, EW code can be deactivated upon certain conditions. Issuance of an early warning can also occur upon an event such as the execution of a user-inserted assert or warning statement, or before a file is opened, wherein the EW issues if a null pointer about to be passed to a system function. In some embodiments, an EW will issue if the value of an argument to some function exceeds a predetermined range. In various embodiments, the EW code is placed in a loop, and issues an EW if the loop is executed more than a predetermined number of times, or the EW code issues an EW upon the execution of user-marked code, or the EW code issues an EW when the time duration between execution of two points in the program exceeds a predetermined value, or upon the detection of an untested configuration.