Patent ID: 7937690

Claim:
A method of evaluating performance of a software application, the method comprising: receiving, in an evaluation module in a computer system and from an application program: 1) a first call indicating that execution begins of a predefined portion of the application program, and then 2) a second call indicating that the execution of the predefined portion ends, the evaluation module being configured to receive similar calls from any of several application programs in the computer system; determining, in configuration information for the application program that is available to the evaluation module, whether a duration time between the first and second calls exceeds a predefined time specified in the configuration information; and upon determining that the duration time exceeds the predefined time, forwarding a message from the evaluation module to a recipient, the message and the recipient being specified in the configuration information; wherein the configuration information includes settings associated with respective portions of the application program having different granularity, wherein more granular settings more selectively identify portions of the application program to which the settings apply than do less granular settings, and wherein a most granular of the settings that applies to the first and second calls is applied in the determining.