Establishing services

• US 20050261920A1
• Filed: 05/20/2004
• Published: 11/24/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 05/20/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Marqeta, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Kuno, Harumi, Karp, Alan Hersh
• Granted Patent: US 8,799,901 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/1.100
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management

Abstract

Methods associated with a service are identified. Select ones of the methods are matched to generic methods of a conversation. A new service is established from the conversation that includes the select ones of the methods.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

identifying methods associated with a legacy service;

matching select ones of the methods to generic methods of a conversation; and

establishing a new service as the conversation that includes the matched select ones of the methods.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein identifying further includes decoupling legacy operations of the legacy service to create the methods.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein identifying further includes publishing the methods as being available for use in one or more additional conversations associated with one or more additional new services.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein matching further includes populating a data structure which lists generic variable names for the generic methods along with names associated with the select ones of the methods that are to replace them in the conversation.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein matching further includes populating a data structure with names associated with the select ones of the methods that replace the generic methods in the conversation in a sequential order that permits each generic variable name for one of the generic methods to be replaced by one of the methods.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein matching further includes manually modifying the conversation in order to replace the generic methods in the conversation with the select ones of the methods.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein establishing further includes processing the new service on a World-Wide Web server available to clients, users, other services, and applications over the Internet.

8. A data structure that generically defines a service implemented in a machine accessible medium, the data structure comprising:

generic variable names for generic methods; and

instruction logic which defines the invocation and processing flow for the generic methods, wherein the generic variable names are subsequently populated with specific names for specific methods and the populated data structure is established as a specific instance of a service.

9. The data structure of claim 8, wherein the data structure is populated by a mapping application which replaces the generic variable names with the specific names.

10. The data structure of claim 9, wherein the mapping application uses a second data structure to acquire a mapping for the generic variable names to the specific names.

11. The data structure of claim 9, wherein the mapping application is a graphical user interface that displays the generic variable names and available specific names along with descriptions to a user for selection.

12. The data structure of claim 9, wherein the mapping application is an automated application that dynamically consumes configuration data in order to populate the data structure and establish the new service.

13. The data structure of claim 8, wherein the data structure is populated multiple times to create multiple additional instances of a service.

14. The data structure of claim 8, wherein the specific instance of the service is published over the Internet and made available to clients, services, and users.

15. A system, comprising:

names of decoupled methods associated with a legacy service;

a generic conversation data structure defining a generic service; and

a mapping between the names and generic methods identified in the generic conversation data structure, wherein in response to the mapping the generic conversation data structure is populated to establish a specific service having the decoupled methods.

16. The system of claim 15, further comprising a conversation editor for initially establishing the generic conversation data structure.

17. The system of claim 15, further comprising a mapping editor for initially establishing the mapping.

18. The system of claim 15, wherein the generic conversation data structure includes instruction logic which defines the processing flow of the generic service.

19. The system of claim 15, wherein the specific service is initiated on a server and made available for access over a network.

20. The system of claim 15 further comprising:

additional names of additional decoupled methods associated with the legacy service; and

an additional mapping between the additional names and the generic methods identified in the generic conversation data structure, wherein in response to the additional mapping the generic conversation data structure is populated to establish an additional specific service having the additional decoupled methods.

21. A computer readable medium for interacting with a service having instructions thereon, the instructions when accessed performing the method comprising:

receiving names for generic methods associated with a legacy service;

receiving a generic conversation data structure associated with a generic service; and

receiving a mapping between the names and the generic methods identified in the generic conversation data structure.

22. The medium of claim 21 further including instructions for establishing a new service in response to the mapping by populating the generic conversation data structure with the names.

23. The medium of claim 22 further including instructions for accessing a number of the generic methods during interactions between the new service and at least one of another service, user, and application.

24. The medium of claim 22, wherein mapping further includes instructions for accessing at least one of an electronic file and a custom data structure to acquire the mapping.

25. The medium of claim 21, wherein receiving the generic conversation data structure further includes instructions for receiving the generic conversation data structure as output from a conversation editor.

26. An apparatus, comprising:

a generic conversation data structure associated with a generic service; and

means for mapping operations of an existing service to operations identified in the generic conversation data structure in order to create a new service.

27. The apparatus of claim 26, wherein the means for mapping is interactively acquired from a user.

28. The apparatus of claim 26, wherein the means for mapping is automatically acquired from at least one of an electronic file and a custom data structure.

29. The apparatus of claim 26, wherein the means for mapping is used to map different combinations of the operations of the existing service to different combinations of the operations in the generic conversation data structure in order to create a different service.

30. The apparatus of claim 26, wherein the means for mapping is processed to populate an instance of the generic conversation data structure, wherein the instance includes processing instructions for the new service.