Content management system and methodology for implementing a complex object using nested/recursive structures

• US 20030204537A1
• Filed: 04/23/2002
• Published: 10/30/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 04/23/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Le, Khanh M., Hu, Tawei, Nelson, Kenneth C., Choy, David M., Liang, Lily L., Perry, Edward J.
• Granted Patent: US 6,999,966 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/203
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/289 Object oriented databases
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99942 Manipulating data structure, e.g. compression, compaction, compilation

Abstract

A content management system is provided including a plurality of tables forming a tree-based storage hierarchy. The system includes a library server having a stored procedure which creates a hierarchical tree-based storage structure having any number of child components horizontally and any number of component types vertically thus specifying a tree topology. Advantageously, a single invocation of the stored procedure will create the specified tree-based data storage structure which is stored in the library server.

Claims

1. A method of organizing information in a content management system comprising the steps of:

receiving first input, by a stored procedure in the system, indicating a number of tables to be created horizontally in a tree-based data storage hierarchy;

receiving second input, by the stored procedure, indicating a number of tables to be created vertically in the tree-based data storage hierarchy; and

creating the tree-based data storage hierarchy including a root table and at least one child table, the tree-based data storage hierarchy including the number tables indicated horizontally and vertically in the receiving steps.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein a single invocation of the stored procedure provides both the first input indicating the number of tables to be created horizontally and the second input indicating the number of tables to be created vertically.

3. The method of claim 1 including storing the stored procedure in a library server included in the content management system.

4. A method of organizing information in a content management system comprising the steps of:

creating tables horizontally in the system by;

specifying a number of child types from a root component instance or any parent component instance;

specifying an array of child type structures;

looping through the child type structures specified in the array to process the insertion of component instances into component tables, such that any number of child component tables can be processed horizontally.

5. The method of claim 4 further comprising the step of:

creating tables vertically in the system by;

specifying the number of components to be created for each child component table;

specifying an array of component structures including attribute values;

looping through the array of component structures and using the attribute values in each component structure of the array to create a component instance for each component structure respectively.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein the steps are implemented by a stored procedure.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein the stored procedure is located in a library server within the content management system.

8. The method of claim 6 wherein the stored procedure is implemented in C language.

9. The method of claim 5 wherein the specifying steps include inputting information provided by a client application.

10. A computer program product for organizing information in a content management system, the computer program product including a plurality of computer executable instructions stored on a computer readable medium, wherein the instructions, when executed by the content management system, cause the system to perform the steps of:

receiving first input, by a stored procedure in the system, indicating a number of tables to be created horizontally in a tree-based data storage hierarchy;

receiving second input, by the stored procedure, indicating a number of tables to be created vertically in the tree-based data storage hierarchy; and

creating the tree-based data storage hierarchy including a root table and at least one child table, the tree-based data storage hierarchy including the number tables indicated horizontally and vertically in the receiving steps.

11. The computer program product of claim 10 wherein the computer readable medium is an optical disk.

12. The computer program product of claim 10 wherein the computer readable medium is a magnetic disk.

13. A computer program product for organizing information in a content management system, the computer program product including a plurality of computer executable instructions stored on a computer readable medium, wherein the instructions, when executed by the content management system, cause the system to perform the steps of:

creating tables horizontally in the system by;

specifying a number of child types from a root component instance or any parent component instance;

specifying an array of child type structures;

looping through the child type structures specified in the array to process the insertion of component instances into component tables, such that any number of child component tables can be processed horizontally, and

creating tables vertically in the system by;

specifying the number of components to be created for each child component table;

specifying an array of component structures including attribute values;

looping through the array of component structures and using the attribute values in each component structure of the array to create a component instance for each component structure respectively.

14. The computer program product of claim 13 wherein the computer readable medium is an optical disk.

15. The computer program product of claim 13 wherein the computer readable medium is a magnetic disk.

16. A content management system comprising:

a resource manager for storing objects;

a library server, coupled to the resource manager, for storing metadata regarding objects in the resource manager, the library server including a stored procedure for receiving first input indicating a number of tables to be created horizontally in a tree-based data storage hierarchy, the stored procedure receiving a second input indicating a number of tables to be created vertically in the tree-based data storage hierarchy;

the stored procedure creating the data storage hierarchy in the library server including a root table and at least one child table, the data storage hierarchy including the number of tables indicated horizontally and vertically.

17. The content management system of claim 16 further comprising an application program interface coupled to the library server and the resource manager.

18. The content management system of claim 17 further comprising a client coupled to the application program interface.