Patent ID: 8214480

Claim:
A method of identifying a root cause of an event in a network of linked entities, the method comprising: a. defining a plurality of signatures, each signature comprising one or more classes, the classes being categorized by a taxonomy of classes; b. receiving a first message from the network; c. assigning one or more of the signatures to the first message; d. establishing a set of one or more hypotheses, each hypothesis identifying: i. a respective root cause; and ii. one of the signatures assigned to the first message; e. receiving one or more subsequent messages from the network; f. determining whether each subsequent message matches a signature identified by a hypothesis established in step d; and g. generating an output based on the determination in step f; wherein at least one of the signatures comprise one or more association classes categorized by a taxonomy of association classes, each association class defining an association between two entities; and wherein steps c and f comprise matching an association class of the message with the association class of the signature.