Patent ID: 7251584

Claim:
A method of identifying data that participate in symptoms of root cause problems in a computer system comprising: providing symptoms in a symptoms database, wherein each of said symptoms relates to at least one associated root cause problem and comprises at least one event correlation rule, each correlation rule having at least one predicate thereof; and iteratively performing a symptom analysis comprising: collecting new events from at least one event source to be considered by said symptom analysis; correlating said collected events with said symptoms, wherein a select event participates with a select symptom if said select event satisfies at least one predicate of an associated event correlation rule of said select symptom; dynamically updating a prediction of the likelihood that ones of said select symptoms will occur based at least upon current predicates of said event correlation rules of said select symptoms that are satisfied by said collected events; and conveying information corresponding to said prediction of the likelihood that ones of said select symptoms will occur.