Method and system for efficient and scalable detection and management of global annotations

• US 20050209989A1
• Filed: 10/14/2004
• Published: 09/22/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 03/18/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Wall, David A., Grev, Christine A., Tran, Hoa T., Cragun, Brian J., Albornoz, Jordi A.
• Granted Patent: US 7,502,809 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/134 Hyperlinking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/169 Annotation, e.g. comment data or footnotes
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99943 Generating database or data structure, e.g. via user interface
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing

Abstract

Methods, systems, and articles of manufacture for proving global annotation services are disclosed. Global annotations are used to annotate a data element independently from the internal representation of a data element employed by a particular software application. Data elements are normalized into a form used by a global annotation system to identify the data element, and corresponding global annotations, independent from the application in which the data element may appear. An annotation cache may be used to store the global annotations that have been created for a particular data source, improving the efficiency of the global annotation system.

Claims

1. A method for managing global annotations for data elements present in a data source comprising:

defining a set of data elements for which global annotations may be created, wherein global annotations are stored by an annotation system independently from a representation used by a software application for a particular data element;

identifying the data source accessed by a user;

parsing the data source to identify a set of candidate data elements, wherein each member of the set of candidate data also appears in the set of data elements for which global annotations may be created; and

returning an indication of the members of the set of candidate data elements to the software application.

2. The method of claim 1, returning an indication of the members of the set of candidate data elements comprises providing, to the software application used to access a data source, data content capable of being rendered for display the software application.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the data content is HTML data content rendered by an internet web-browser application.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein parsing the data source to identify a set of candidate data elements, comprises:

transforming data elements appearing in the data source to a normalized form used by the annotation system to identify data elements independently from a representation used by a software application for a particular data element; and

comparing the normalized data elements with the set of data elements for which global annotations may be created.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the set of data elements for which global annotations may be created comprises data elements taken from a dictionary of terms maintained for a particular user and data elements taken from a registry of terms maintained for the annotation system.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein defining a set of data elements comprises adding a new data element to the set of data elements for which global annotations may be created the first time a global annotation is created for a particular data element.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving, from a requesting entity, a request to create a global annotation for a data element appearing in a data source;

selecting an annotation structure that defines a set of fields required to create the global annotation;

obtaining annotation content for a new global annotation;

populating the annotation structure with the annotation content; and

updating an annotation store with the new global annotation, wherein the annotation store contains the global annotations created for the set of data elements.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein obtaining annotation content comprises providing, to the requesting entity, data content capable of being rendered for display the software application.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the data content is an HTML document transmitted the requesting entity and rendered by an internet web-browser application.

10. The method of claim 7, wherein the data source accessed by a user occurs each time a user access a data source.

11. A method for accessing global annotations for data elements present in a data source, comprising:

identifying the data source accessed by a user;

identifying a set of annotated data elements, wherein each member of the set of annotated data elements appears in the data source and has at least a corresponding global annotation;

returning an indication of the members of the set of annotated data elements to the software application used by the user to access the data source; and

providing an indication of the members of the set annotated data elements in the data source for which there exists a corresponding global annotation to the user.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein returning an indication of the members of the set of candidate data elements comprises providing, to the software application used to access a data source, data content capable of being rendered for display the software application.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the data content is HTML data content rendered by an internet web-browser application.

14. The method of claim 11, wherein identifying a set of annotated data elements comprises:

parsing the data source to identify a set of annotated data elements;

transforming data appearing in the data source to a normalized form used by the annotation system to identify data elements independently from a representation of a particular data element used by a software application; and

comparing the normalized data elements with the set data elements for which global annotations have been created.

15. The method of claim 11, wherein identifying a set of annotated data elements comprises accessing an annotation cache, wherein the annotation cache includes a list of global annotations associated with data elements that appear in a particular data source.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein an item included on the list of global annotations has an expiration time indicating when the cache entry is no longer valid.

17. The method of claim 15, herein the list of global annotations identifies a global annotation on the list of global annotations using a unique identifier.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein the unique identifier comprises an MD5 hash function generated using the Global annotation as input data to the MD5 hash function.

19. The method of claim 11, wherein the data source accessed by a user is parsed to identify the set of annotated data elements each time each time a user access the data source.

20. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

determining whether an entry in an annotation cache exists for the data source being accessed being accessed by a user; and

if not

updating the annotation cache with an entry for the data source being accessed by a user that includes a list of the set of annotated data elements identified by parsing the data source.

23. The method of claim 15, further comprising:

identifying, if the annotation cache does not have an entry for the data source, a set of data elements that appear in the particular data source that have at least a corresponding annotation in the annotation database;

retrieving a set of annotations from the global annotation database corresponding to the identified set of data elements;

updating the annotation cache to reflect the set of global annotations available for data elements appearing in the data source; and

returning an indication of the set of data elements to the requesting entity.

21. A system for managing a set of global annotations, comprising:

an annotation database for storing a set of global annotations, wherein each global annotation annotates a data element, and wherein global annotations are stored independently from a representation of a particular data element used by a software application,

a set of plug-in components integrated into the software application, wherein the plug-in components are configured to communicate with the software application and with an annotation server that is configured to communicate with the plug-in components and configured to process requests from the applications to process global annotations; and

a global annotation cache configured to identify a set of global annotations corresponding to data elements in a particular data source.

22. A method for improving the efficiency of a global annotation system, comprising:

providing an annotation database for storing a set of global annotations, wherein the global annotations annotate a set of data elements and wherein global annotations are stored independently from a representation of a particular data element used by a software application;

providing an annotation cache configured to identify a set of global annotations corresponding to data elements that appear in a particular data source on a per data source basis;

receiving a request to identify any data elements in a data source being accessed by a user that have at least a corresponding global annotation in the annotation database;

determining whether the annotation cache contains an entry for the data source and, if so;

returning an indication of the set of global annotations in the annotation cache corresponding to the particular data source being accessed by the user.

24. A computer-readable medium containing an executable component providing global annotation services that, when executed by a processor, performs operations comprising:

defining a set of data elements for which global annotations may be created, wherein global annotations are stored by an annotation system independently from a representation used by a software application for a particular data element;

identifying a data source accessed by a user;

parsing the data source to identify a set of candidate data elements, wherein each member of the set of candidate data appears in the set of data elements for which global annotations may be created

returning an indication of the members of the set of candidate data elements to the software application program used by the user to access the data source.

25. The computer readable medium of claim 24, further comprising:

receiving, from a requesting entity, a request to create a global annotation for a data element appearing in a data source;

selecting an annotation structure that defines a set of fields required to create the global annotation;

obtaining annotation content for a new global annotation;

populating the annotation structure with the annotation content; and

updating an annotation store with the new global annotation, wherein the annotation store contains the global annotations created for the set of data elements.

26. The computer readable medium of claim 25, further comprising:

updating an annotation cache configured to store global annotations available for data sources on a per data source basis with the new annotation.

27. A computer-readable medium containing an executable component providing global annotation services that when executed by a processor, performs operations comprising:

identifying a data source accessed by a user;

determining whether the data source has an entry in a global annotation cache that identifies the global annotations available for data sources on a per data source basis; and

if so,

returning an indication of the set of global annotations in the annotation cache corresponding to the particular data source being accessed by the user returning an indication of the members of the set of annotated data elements to the software application used by the user to access the data source; and

otherwise

identifying a set of data elements that appear in the particular data source that have at least a corresponding annotation in the annotation database;

retrieving a set of annotations from the global annotation database corresponding to the identified set of data elements; and

updating the annotation cache to reflect the set of global annotations available for data elements identified in the data source; and

returning an indication of the set of data elements to the requesting entity.