Patent ID: 8037458

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, from a first trace data provider, a first trace data associated with a first programming engine that is associated with first trace activities at a first computer system, wherein a first tracing format of the first trace data is compatible with a common trace data format; receiving, from a second trace data provider, a second trace data associated with a second programming engine that is associated with second trace activities at a second computer system, wherein a second trace format of the second trace data is incompatible with the common trace data format, wherein the second trace data and the second programming engine are incompatible with and independent of the first trace data and the first programming engine, respectively; converting the second trace format of the second trace data such that the second trace format is compatible with the common trace data format, wherein converting includes correlating compatible elements and incompatible elements of the second trace data as provided by the second trace format, adding compatible file streams to the second trace format, and removing incompatible file streams from the second trace format, wherein adding compatible file streams includes providing compatible functionalities through the second trace format that are missing from the second trace data to establish compatibility with the common trace data format, and wherein removing incompatible file streams includes removing incompatible tracing functionalities from the second trace format that are compatible with the second programming engine and incompatible with the common trace data format, wherein the common trace data format comprises a trace format that is designated as the common trace data format, the trace format including a common performance trace (CPT) format, wherein the CPT format includes a common interface model (CIM)-compliant format and provides the common trace data format that defines a type of data that is needed to analyze performance; and providing the first trace data and the second trace data in formats compatible with the common trace data format, the formats including the first trace format and the converted second trace format.