Patent ID: 7908160

Claim:
A method for generating audit trails, comprising: establishing a connection between an event listener component and at least one event source; collecting event data for one of a plurality of events from the at least one event source at the event listener component; responsive to collecting the event data, transmitting an event notification from the event listener component to a correlator; loading a process definition at the correlator, the process definition defining a plurality of state transitions each associated with different ones of the plurality of events; responsive to receiving the event notification, determining at the correlator that the event data is representative of a state transition to a final process state; traversing the process definition in reverse by a computer and, for each one of the plurality of state transitions, transmitting a query to the event listener component to retrieve the event associated with the one of the plurality of state transitions; determining if all of the events associated with the plurality of state transitions have been retrieved or have not been retrieved; generating, by the computer, at least one audit trail event at the correlator, based on the event data collected at the event listener component; wherein if all of the events associated with the plurality of state transitions are retrieved, a normal audit trail event is generated, and if one or more events associated with the plurality of state transitions are not retrieved, an anomaly audit trail event is generated; and transmitting the at least one audit trail event to a notification component.