Software Monitoring With Controllable Overhead

The authors introduce the technique of Software Monitoring with Controllable Overhead (SMCO), which is based on a novel combination of supervisory control theory of discrete event systems and PID-control theory of discrete time systems. SMCO controls monitoring overhead by temporarily disabling monitoring of selected events for as short a time as possible under the constraint of a user-supplied target overhead ot. This strategy is optimal in the sense that it allows SMCO to monitor as many events as possible, within the confines of ot. SMCO is a general monitoring technique that can be applied to any system interface or API.