IDENTIFYING INTERPRETED PROGRAMS THROUGH CLASS LOADING SEQUENCES

A solution is proposed for metering the usage of Java programs. For this purpose, each Java program to be metered is associated with a fingerprint defined by a reference sequence of classes that must be loaded for its execution. The sequence of classes that are actually loaded by the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is monitored, for example, by means of a wrapper for a class loader of the JVM. The sequence of loaded classes is then used to identify the Java program in execution (which fingerprint matches this sequence of loaded classes).