Method and architecture for providing data-change alerts to external applications via a push service

• US 20040186860A1
• Filed: 03/21/2003
• Published: 09/23/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 03/21/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle America, Inc. (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Oracle America, Inc. (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Lee, Wen-Hsin, Harb, Joseph
• Granted Patent: US 9,448,860 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/200
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04842 Selection of displayed objects or displayed text elements G06F3/0482 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/451 Execution arrangements for user interfaces
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/542 Event management; Broadcasting; Multicasting; Notifications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/55 Push-based network services

Abstract

Method and software architecture for providing data-change alerts corresponding to data changes in a data system to external (of the data system) applications. A computer user interface is provided to enable a user to identify user interface (UI) objects corresponding to a user interface of an application used to access the data system to provide data-change alert support for. For example, the UI objects may comprise screens, views, applets, fields, and columns. Based on the alert-enabled UI objects, data-change alert triggers are generated to monitor for data-change events (e.g., inserts, updates, and deletes) that cause changes to data in the data system corresponding to those alert-enabled UI objects. In response to data changes in the data system corresponding to alert-enabled UI objects, appropriate triggers are executed to initiate generation of data-change alerts comprising data values that have been changed. The data-change alerts are then pushed to the external application.

Claims

1. A method to provide data-change alerts from a data system to an external application, comprising:

alert-enabling selected user interface (UI) objects corresponding to an application used to access the data system; and

alerting the external application of changes in data system data corresponding to the UI objects that are alert-enabled.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

automatically generating data-change event triggers to monitor for data-change events corresponding to the UI objects that are alert-enabled;

and in response to a data-change event in which data in the data system are changed;

executing any applicable data-change event trigger corresponding to the data-change event to cause a data-change alert to be sent to the external application.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the data-change alert triggers comprise alert business processes that are executed in an application server tier of an n-tier distributed software architecture.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the external application is alerted via a data-change alert comprising an XML (eXtended Markup Language) document.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the external application is alerted in response to data changed by a user of the external application.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the external application is alerted in response to data changed by a user of a data system application.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the alert comprises a data-change alert that is pushed to the external application via a Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP) service.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the alert comprises a data-change alert that is pushed to the external application via a messaging queue service.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the UI objects to alert-enable are selected by performing the operations of:

presenting indicia pertaining to respective UI objects of the user interface for the data system application to the user via a alert subscription user interface; and

enabling the user to select which UI objects to alert-enable via the alert subscription user interface by marking the indicia corresponding to those UI objects.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the alert subscription user interface comprises a graphical user interface (GUI) and the indicia pertaining to the respective UI objects are presented to the user as a hierarchical tree corresponding to a hierarchical relationship of the UI objects in the user interface of the data system application.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein selected levels in the hierarchical tree may be expanded or collapsed in response to a user input.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein the GUI is generated by performing the operations of:

storing metadata corresponding to the user interface for the data system application, said metadata comprising object definitions for the UI objects of the user interface including a hierarchical position of each UI object within the user interface;

processing the metadata to build an application representation comprising an internal representation of the user interface of the data system application including data identifying the hierarchical position of each UI object; and

rendering a hierarchical tree to provide a visual representation of the application representation.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the application representation comprises an XML tree, further comprising:

sending the XML tree to a browser operating on a client machine that is linked in communication with the data system; and

rendering the hierarchical tree via the browser.

14. The method of claim 9, wherein the alert subscription user interface is generated by:

building an application representation comprising an internal representation of the user interface of the data system application including data identifying a hierarchical position of each UI object within the user interface; and

rendering an user interface based on data extracted from the application representation.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the user interface that is rendered is included as part of the external application and is generated based on an application representation passed from the data system to the external application.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein the UI objects include objects pertaining to screens, views, applets, columns, and fields in the user interface of the data system application.

17. The method of claim 1, wherein a data-change alert is sent in response to a data update event, and includes before update data and after update data corresponding to applicable alert-enabled UI objects.

18. The method of claim 1, wherein a data-change alert is sent in response to a data deletion event, and includes data that existed prior to being deleted by the data deletion event corresponding to applicable alert-enabled UI objects.

19. The method of claim 1, wherein a data-change alert is sent in response to a data insert event, and includes data inserted in connection with entry of new data corresponding to applicable alert-enabled UI objects.

20. The method of claim 1, wherein no changes are required to be made to existing data system software components such that the operations of the method are performed in a manner that is transparent to normal data system operations.

21. The method of claim 1, wherein the data system comprises a Siebel Enterprise data system.

22. The method of claim 1, further comprising enabling a user to specify a destination to which data-change alerts are sent.

23. A machine readable medium having instructions stored thereon, which when executed provide data-change alerts from a data system to an external application by performing the operations of:

generating data by which a computer user interface may be rendered to enable a user to identify user interface (UI) objects corresponding to a user interface of a data system application to provide data-change alert support for, said identified UI objects being alert-enabled;

generating data-change event triggers to monitor for changes in data in the data system corresponding to the UI objects that are alert-enabled;

and in response thereto,

generating a data-change alert and submitting the data-change alert to be sent to the external application, said data-change alert comprising data corresponding to at least one alert-enabled UI object that has changed.

24. The machine-readable medium of claim 23, wherein the data-change alert is sent as an XML (eXtended Markup Language) document.

25. The machine-readable medium of claim 24, wherein a portion of the instructions correspond to an XML generation service that is used to generate the XML document, and wherein in response to a data-change event in which data in the data system are changed,

executing any applicable data-change event trigger corresponding to the data-change event, said execution performing the operations of:

extracting changed data values corresponding to the data-change event;

calling the XML generation service for execution to generate the XML document; and

sending the changed data values to the XML generation service, wherein the XML document includes the changed data values.

26. The machine-readable medium of claim 25, wherein the data-change alert triggers comprise alert business processes that are executed in an application server tier of an n-tier distributed software architecture.

27. The machine-readable medium of claim 23, wherein the computer user interface that is rendered to enable the user to identify the UI objects to alert-enable comprises a plurality of indicia pertaining to respective UI objects of the user interface for the data system application, and the user is enabled to identify which UI objects to alert-enable by marking the indicia corresponding to those UI objects via the computer user interface.

28. The machine-readable medium of claim 27, wherein the computer user interface comprises a graphical user interface (GUI) and the indicia pertaining to the respective UI objects are presented to the user as a hierarchical tree corresponding to a hierarchical relationship of the UI objects in the user interface of the data system application.

29. The machine-readable medium of claim 28, wherein selected levels in the hierarchical tree may be expanded or collapsed in response to a user input.

30. The machine-readable media of claim 28, wherein execution of the instructions generates the GUI by performing the operations of:

retrieving metadata corresponding to the user interface for the data system application, said metadata comprising object definitions for the UI objects of the user interface including a hierarchical position of each UI object within the user interface;

processing the metadata to build an application representation comprising an internal representation of the user interface of the data system application including data identifying the hierarchical position of each UI object; and

generating data by which a hierarchical tree may be rendered to provide a visual representation of the application representation.

31. The machine-readable media of claim 30, wherein the application representation comprises an XML tree, and execution of the instructions further performs the operation of generating Web-content based on the XML tree and sending the Web-content to a browser operating on a client machine that is linked in communication with the data system to enable the hierarchical tree to be rendered by the browser.

32. The machine-readable media of claim 30, wherein the application representation comprises an XML tree, and execution of the instructions further performs the operation of sending the XML tree to a third-party GUI application to be rendered by the third-party GUI application to generate the GUI.