Patent ID: 7334221

Claim:
A method for tracing a program comprising: generating a trace object code from trace source code; processing component information of the trace object code to generate an object file; wherein the object file comprises a linear sequence of bytes comprising: a file header, a first section header of type enable control block (ECB), a second section header of type action, a first section data entry associated with the first section header comprising a name of a probe to enable and a name of a second section data entry of type action, the second section data entry associated with the second section header defining at least one selected from a group consisting of a predefined action and a name of a third section data entry of type program object corresponding to an action, and a third section header comprising a name of a fourth section data entry comprising program object code associated with a predicate, wherein the program object code associated with the predicate is executed when the probe is encountered during tracing; parsing the object file, by a tracing framework, to enable the probe in the program; tracing the program, wherein tracing the program comprises encountering the probe; executing at least one selected from a group consisting of the predefined action and the action associated with the probe to obtain data.