Goal trees and fault trees for root cause analysis

Typical enterprise applications are built upon different platforms, operate in a heterogeneous, distributed environment, and utilize different technologies, such as middleware, databases and Web services. Diagnosing the root causes of problems in such systems is difficult in part due to the number of possible configuration and tuning parameters. Today a variety of tools are used to aid operators of enterprise applications identify root causes. For example, a user input validation tool detects and prevents Website intrusions or a log analysis tool identifies malfunctioning components. Searching for the root causes of such failures in a myriad of functional and non-functional requirements poses significant challenges-not only for users, but also for experienced operators when monitoring, auditing, and diagnosing systems. We propose the notion of a guide map-a set of goal trees and fault trees-to aid users in the process of choosing (supported by high level goal trees) and applying (supported by low level fault trees) suitable diagnostic tools. In this paper we discuss two case studies to illustrate how the guide map aids users to apply two home grown diagnostic tools.