Non-intrusive end-to-end runtime path tracing for J2EE systems

Abstract

An end-to-end runtime path-tracing approach for J2EE systems has been introduced. The approach is non-intrusive and thus does not require instrumentation of middleware or application source code. The implementation of the system has been realised in the COMPAS Java end-to-end monitoring tool that extends and integrates a number of open source projects. The first set of results shows the performance overhead associated with the tool. Further results show the portability of this approach, by applying it to a number of different application server implementations. Finally, it is also shown that runtime paths collected by the implementation can be used for reasoning about the overall system structure and design of complex enterprise applications.