A novel mind map based approach for log data extraction

Abstract

Software log file analysis helps immensely in software testing and troubleshooting. The first step in automated log file analysis is extracting log data. This requires decoding the log file syntax and interpreting data semantics. The expected output of this phase is an organization of the extracted data for further processing. Log data extractors can be developed using popular programming languages targeting one or few log file formats. Rather than repeating this process for each log file format, it is desirable to have a generic scheme for interpreting elements of a log file and filling a data structure suitable for further processing. The new log data extraction scheme introduced in this paper is an attempt to provide the advanced features demanded by modern log file analysis procedures. It is a generic scheme which is capable of handling both text and binary log files with complex structures and difficult syntax. Its output is a tree filled with the information of interest for the particular case.