Using event contexts and matching constraints to monitor software processes

Abstract

Automated monitoring of events that occur in a computer network is essential for non-intrusive software process enactment. Relevant events include modification of product artifacts like source files and documents, and execution and termination of tool invocations. Monitoring these events requires capturing the context in which they occur and constraining the monitoring to relevant events only. We introduce the concept of event context, and present constructs for using it to constrain event matching. The constructs have been implemented as an extension to an existing event monitoring system called Yeast, which serves as the event monitoring component in Provence. Provence is an open process-centered environment that monitors the actual execution of software processes, abstracted as sequences of low-level events, and maps these sequences of events into transitions in the process model enactment.