Abstract: A method and apparatus for managing software processes to improve their stability. Each instance of a software process periodically reports its operating status to a recycler. The status information identifies how long the instance has been continuously executing and how many transactions the instance has executed during that time. If either value exceeds a threshold associated with the process or that specific instance of the process, the instance is instructed to recycle. If instructed to recycle, the instance may stop accepting new transactions, finish handling its current transactions, then restart and resume normal operation. The recycler may postpone or cancel a recycle instruction if the combined capacity of all active instances of the process is below, or may fall below, a minimum desired capacity for the process. The recycler may also recycle itself.

Abstract: In certain embodiments, a method for modeling interactions with a computer system includes collecting interaction information for each of a number of interaction sessions with a computer system, each interaction session being associated with a corresponding agent system and including one or more states and one or more state transitions. The interaction information for an interaction session includes data for the one or more states and the one or more state transitions of the interaction session. The method further includes, for each of the interaction sessions, identifying the one or more states encountered during the interaction session based on the collected interaction information and generating, based on the one or more states encountered during the interaction session, a trace of the interaction session. The method further includes generating, based on the traces of the interaction sessions, a model of the interaction sessions, the model including the traces for each of the interaction sessions.