Patent ID: 7363615

Claim:
A method for providing contextual diagnostic data at a point of failure of a software program, comprising: (a) registering one or more callback functions for each of one or more modules and sub-applications within the program; (b) examining a call stack for the program upon failure of the program; (c) notifying the registered callback functions for the modules and sub-applications based on the examined call stack, wherein an error handler gives each module or sub-application that registered a callback function and is on the examined call stack an opportunity to include specific diagnostic information based on the examined call stack and based on the point of failure within the module or sub-application; (d) performing callback processing, wherein the notified callback functions of the modules and sub-applications interpret the call stack's context supplied to the callback function, determine the contextual diagnostic data to be extracted and supplied to the error handler, and extract and supply the contextual diagnostic data; (e) packaging the contextual diagnostic data supplied by the notified callback functions of the modules and sub-applications; and (f) using the packaged contextual diagnostic data for further analysis in order to troubleshoot the point of failure of the software program.