A Mind Map Based Framework for Automated Software Log File Analysis

Software log file analysis is involved heavily in both Software development and maintenance phases. It serves for various purposes such as verifying the conformance of the software functionality to the specification, software quality check and troubleshooting. Application log files or the logs generated by other monitoring tools are subjected to analysis for extracting information that can be vital in an investigation. These tasks demand expertise to a great deal and are labor intensive when performed manually. The lack of a commonly used technique to record expert knowledge stands as an impediment to automate the analysis tasks. The need for correlating information extracted from different locations in the same log file or multiple log files further ads to this complexity. This paper describes a framework based on mind maps which formulates a homogeneous platform for recording expert knowledge as well as for performing other tasks such as extracting information from log files, drawing inferences and creating reports. The framework includes a scripting language, a parallel application programming interface and a set of tools. Usage is illustrated by a proof of concept system built using the framework that creates a useful report after analyzing a log file generated by a widely used software monitoring tool.