Automated methods and systems that facilitate root cause analysis of distributed-application operational problems and failures

This invention describes a software system that helps diagnose problems in complex software applications that run across many different computers, known as distributed applications. It works by looking at detailed records of how different parts of the application communicate with each other, called "call traces." The system automatically creates simple rules from these traces to identify which specific services or components are causing issues, and it learns from past diagnoses to get better over time. The claims specifically describe a system that uses processors and memory to execute instructions for generating these rules from call trace data.