Patent ID: 7774657

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for estimating that a hardware or software change is correlated with one or more problem events, the method comprising: identifying that a hardware or software change has occurred; identifying one or more problem events that have occurred before and/or after the hardware or software change has occurred; correlating at least one of the one or more problem events with the hardware or software change using a distance measure between the hardware or software change and the at least one correlated problem event, wherein the distance measure comprises an activity-weighted interval that is weighted using at least one computing-activity-performance metric; and making a positive or negative contribution to an overall possibility of a correlation of a category of problem events to the hardware or software change, wherein whether the contribution is positive or negative depends on whether the one or more problem events occurred before or after the hardware or software change, so that the contribution is positive if the one or more problem events occurred after the hardware or software change, and the contribution is negative if the one or more problem events occurred before the hardware or software change.