Patent ID: 8312138

Claim:
A method for identifying and monitoring related business application processes on at least one networked device, the method comprising: identifying a first process that corresponds to a specified business application process; identifying one or more root processes that depend directly and/or indirectly on the first process, and are depended upon by no other process; grouping at least one of the one or more root processes into a root group; identifying a dependency chain of the at least one root process in the root group, comprising the at least one root process in the root group and one or more processes directly and/or indirectly depended upon by the at least one root process in the root group; aggregating performance metrics for the processes in the dependency chain; and generating a directed process dependency graph that includes a plurality of processes and relationships therebetween; wherein identifying the first process comprises identifying the first process in the directed process dependency graph that corresponds to the specified business application process, wherein identifying one or more root processes comprises identifying in the directed process dependency graph one or more root processes by tracing a dependency path from the first process to a respective one of the one or more root processes, and wherein identifying the dependency chain of the at least one root process in the root group comprises identifying a dependency chain as indicated by the directed process dependency graph; wherein identifying a process, identifying one or more root processes, grouping at least one of the one or more root processes, identifying a dependency chain, and aggregating the performance metrics comprise operations performed using at least one programmed computer processor circuit.