Patent ID: 8028200

Claim:
A method comprising: running a computer application having a plurality of components including a first component and a second component, the components of the computer application operating on a plurality of computer systems, the plurality of computer systems including a first system running the first component and a second system running the second component, the first system and the second system having different computer environments; generating a trace correlator for an end to end trace of the operation of the computer application, the end to end trace of the computer application being a trace of the computer application over each of the plurality of computer systems on which the computer application is running, the trace correlator being an identifying data object transferred with a first communication sent to the first system for a trace of the first component running on the first system and with a second communication sent to the second system for a trace of the second component running on the second system, the trace correlator including an identification for the end to end trace of the computer application, the first communication being sent in a format appropriate for the first computer system and the second communication being sent in a format appropriate for the second computer system; performing the end to end trace of the operation of the components of the computer application on the plurality of computer systems, performing the trace including enabling a first trace of the first component of the computer application running on the first system and enabling a second trace of the second component of the computer application running on the second system; collecting a set of trace data from the trace of each of the components of the computer application, including a first set of trace data from the trace of the first component running on the first system and a second set of trace data from the trace of the second component running on the second system, during the operation of the computer application; and combining the sets of trace data from each system, including the first set of trace data from the first system and the second set of trace data from the second system, to generate a combined trace result for the components of the computer application, wherein combining the first set of trace data and the second set of trace data includes utilizing the trace correlator to correlate each set of trace data with the end to end trace.