Patent ID: 7512954

Claim:
A method for tracing one or more occurrences of one or more series of related events, comprising: establishing a protocol that defines a series of related events, in which the protocol comprises an entry point for execution of the protocol; identifying one or more states at one or more different points during execution within the protocol where tracing is desired, in which the protocol invokes one or more tracing functions at the one or more states identified; during execution of one or more occurrences of the protocol, at each of the one or more states, determining one or more actions based upon the one or more states the protocol is currently at and marking a current state and a previous state within one or more trace records based at least in part upon an information of an occurrence of the execution of the protocol; and during execution of the one or more occurrences of the protocol, if the execution of the one or more occurrences of the protocol moves from one thread to a second thread, then passing one or more tokens from the one thread to the second thread to allow one or more links between the one thread and the second thread to be marked within one or more traces.