Silent Messages

We mostly analyze real messages in software traces and logs. In such message streams we may see easily detectable Discontinuity (Volume 4, page 341) patterns. However, in some cases it is beneficial to analyze the absence of messages. Message stream is not uniform; there may be different currents (Volume 4, page 335). If time resolution is 1 ms, for example, then we may have current N msg/ms or in the case of lesser current, such as, 0.5 msg/ms we have the so called Silent Messages (----):

[...]

11 ms: message
12 ms: ----
13 ms: message
14 ms: ----
15 ms: message
16 ms: message
17 ms: ----
18 ms: ----
19 ms: message
[...]

So, by a silent message we understand the possible message that would occupy the minimal time resolution gap. If we look at the following illustration we would see that the whole pattern analysis apparatus can be applied to the analysis of distribution of silent messages.

This pattern is different from Discontinuity pattern because the latter is about large unexpected silences and is different from Sparse Trace (page 303) which is about missing trace statements from source code.