Method and system for performing root cause analysis

This invention describes a smart system for figuring out why things go wrong in computer networks. It works by keeping track of events, like errors or alerts, and assigning them a "survival time." When an event's time runs out, the system efficiently removes it and only recalculates the impact on related rules, saving a lot of processing power. The claims specify this happens on a management computer that stores and creates rules based on events from various monitored devices.