Patent ID: 7895475

Claim:
A method for providing an instrumentation service that adds diagnostic code to session initiation protocol (SIP) software applications, said method comprising: providing a set of SIP-specific dye flags on the instrumentation service of a SIP server, wherein at least one of the set of SIP-specific dye flags includes a property to specify any header of the SIP protocol by using a generic expression; receiving a SIP message by a thread at the SIP server; setting the at least one of said SIP-specific dye flags on a diagnostic context associated with the SIP message by using the generic expression to specify the header of said SIP message; and comparing said SIP-specific dye flag injected into the SIP message to dye masks configured on Diagnostic Monitors to provide filtering of diagnostic activity; executing a diagnostic action upon determining that the SIP-specific dye flag on the SIP message matches the dye mask that is configured on the diagnostic monitor; and re-setting the dye flag on said diagnostic context by the thread for any subsequent request processing.