Patent ID: 7900093

Claim:
A method for monitoring functioning of an electronic data processing system, comprising the steps of: respectively monitoring different functional entities of an electronic data processing system with respective, different agents that are respectively associated with the different functional entities by, through each of said agents, detecting errors in the functioning of the functional entity monitored thereby and generating respective error messages that represent the detected errors; and monitoring each of said agents by sending a simulated error that is designed to cause the agent receiving the simulated error to react by detecting the simulated error as if the simulated error occurred in the functional entity monitored by the agent that received the simulated error, and automatically detecting and evaluating a reaction to the simulated error by the agent that received the simulated error; placing said agents in communication with a common evaluation module, and transmitting said error messages from all of the respective agents to the common evaluation module, and evaluating said error messages in said common evaluation module; and in said evaluation module, differentiating between an actual error occurring in the functional entity monitored by an agent, and a reaction of the agent to the simulated error sent to that agent.