System for the discovery and provisioning of artifacts and composites

• US 10,416,969 B2
• Filed: 11/20/2016
• Issued: 09/17/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 06/27/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Fischer, Peter, Koeth, Oliver, Haddorp, Hendrik, Nauerz, Andreas
• Primary Examiner(s): Coyer, Ryan D.
• Application Number:
  US15/356,651
• Publication Number:
  US 20170206066A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,031 Days
• Field of Search: 717177
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/36 Software reuse
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/60 Software deployment

Abstract

A system for automatically assisted generation of composite applications composed of instantiable components performs the steps of:

• a) dynamically accessing a data source of one or more components being potentially suitable for being used within the composite application,
• b) parsing the data source for a predetermined searched component according to a predetermined functionality specification standard,
• c) ranking found components according to predetermined ranking criteria,
• d) defining a list of selected usable components from the ranking,
• e) storing at least a subset of the selected components locally, and
• f) automatically deploying the composite application from the selected components.

Claims

1. An electronic portal data processing system for automatically assisted generation of composite applications composed of instantiable components comprising:

a computer with memory and at least one processor;

a portal application executing in the memory of the computer by the at least one processor, the portal application receiving in a registry service of a portal system from multiple different sources over the Internet, different templates and artifacts and storing the different templates in a template catalog, and the different artifacts in an artifact registry, the template acting as a base for structure and function of a composite application constructed from a composition of selected ones of the different artifacts and invoking a template discovery service of the portal system to locate in the template catalog a specific template supporting a specified technical functionality, downloading the located specific template from the template catalog into a template registry of an instantiation component of the portal system, and locating meta-data within the downloaded template, the meta-data specifying predetermined functionality version compatibility and dependency information, the portal application performing;

dynamically accessing the artifact registry and,

parsing the artifact registry to identify the one or more components matching the predetermined functionality including version compatibility and dependency information,

ranking the identified one or more components according to predetermined ranking criteria that has been adjusted to the composite application,

selecting ones of the ranked identified one or more components and defining a list of the selected components from the ranking,

storing at least a subset of the selected usable components in a local storage, and,

automatically deploying the composite application from the selected usable components.

3. The electronic portal data processing system of claim 1, wherein the portal system comprises:

a composite application infrastructure component that manages application instances during runtime and also manages connection and data flow between instantiable components of the composite application; and

,

a templating application infrastructure component that manages templates.

4. The electronic portal data processing system of claim 3, wherein the templating application infrastructure component further includes a lookup component that interprets meta-data of a component description.

5. The electronic portal data processing system of claim 1, wherein the portal system is communicatively coupled to an artifact registry service.

2. A computer program product for automatically assisted generation of composite applications, comprising a non-transitory computer useable storage medium storing computer readable program code that when executed on a computer causes the computer to perform the steps of:

receiving in a registry service of a portal system from multiple different sources over the Internet, different templates and artifacts and storing the different templates in a template catalog, and the different artifacts in an artifact registry, the template acting as a base for structure and function of a composite application constructed from a composition of selected ones of the different artifacts;

invoking a template discovery service of the portal system to locate in the template catalog a specific template supporting a specified technical functionality, downloading the located specific template from the template catalog into a template registry of an instantiation component of the portal system, and locating meta-data within the downloaded template, the meta-data specifying predetermined functionality version compatibility and dependency information,

dynamically accessing the artifact registry and,

parsing the artifact registry to identify the one or more components matching the predetermined functionality including version compatibility and dependency information,

ranking the identified one or more components according to predetermined ranking criteria that has been adjusted to the composite application,

selecting ones of the ranked identified one or more components and defining a list of the selected components from the ranking,

storing at least a subset of the selected usable components in a local storage, and,

automatically deploying the composite application from the selected usable components.

6. The computer program product of claim 2, wherein the computer further performs the steps of:

instantiating a template; and

,

interpreting meta-data of a component description.

7. The computer program product of claim 2, wherein the computer further performs the steps of:

searching for suitable components in at least one of a local list of components and in a remote data collection by using a discovery component as a part of a remote service.