Business event processing

• US 20070005410A1
• Filed: 06/30/2005
• Published: 01/04/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 06/30/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: eBay Inc.
• Original Assignee: eBay Inc.
• Inventors: Geshel, Vadim, Yao, Yitao, Ruan, Angie, Pereshyvaylo, Sergiy, Drobintsev, Maxim, Kasravi, Kam
• Granted Patent: US 7,779,421 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/8
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/466 Transaction processing
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/00 Administration; Management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06316 Sequencing of tasks or work
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0633 Workflow analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0601 Electronic shopping [e-shopping]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0631 Item recommendations
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/08 Auctions

Abstract

Techniques for business event processing are presented. Producer services produce events that are managed and distributed by a transport service. Consumer services acquire events from the transport service and perform actions in response to the events. The production, distribution, and processing of the events and actions may be asynchronously and concurrently performed.

Claims

1. A system, including:

a producer interface;

a transport interface; and

a consumer interface, wherein the producer interface is to generate events, the transport interface is to distribute the events to the consumer interface, and wherein the consumer interface is to process the events.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the events are asynchronously distributed from the transport interface and asynchronously processed by the consumer interface.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the consumer interface includes a plurality of consumers, and wherein each consumer or select group of consumers is associated with a unique event type and each consumer or each select group of consumers is to process select ones of the events associated with its unique event type.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein each consumer is to process concurrently with remaining ones of the consumers.

5. The system of claim 3, wherein at least two of the consumers is to process a select one of the events.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the events include parameter data produced by the producer interface and consumed by the consumer interface.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the transport interface is to load balance the events to consumers associated with the consumer interface.

8. A system, including:

an event producer;

an event consumer; and

an event distributing means for distributing one or more events to the event consumer in response to the one or more events that are produced by the event producer, wherein the one or more events are processed by one or more services of the event consumer.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein at least two of the one or more services process in parallel with one another.

10. The system of claim 8, wherein at least two of the one or more services process asynchronously with one another.

11. The system of claim 8, wherein the event distributing means maintains the events in one or more database tables.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein at least one of the database tables identifies a last event identifier processed by a particular one of the one or more services.

13. The system of claim 8, wherein the event distributing means provides each of the one or more services with a select grouping of the events as a batch of the events.

14. A system of claim 8, wherein the event producer is associated with at least one of an online merchant and a login resource associated with a business service.

15. A method, including:

producing an event by a producer service;

sending the event from the producer service to a transport service;

distributing the event from the transport service to a consumer service; and

processing one or more actions by the consumer service in response to the event.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein processing further includes asynchronously processing the event by at least two of the one or more actions.

17. The method of claim 15, wherein processing further includes concurrently processing the event by at least two of the one or more actions.

18. The method of claim 15, wherein producing further includes adding parameter data have name-value pairs to the event, wherein the name-value pairs are processed by the one or more actions with the event.

19. The method of claim 15, wherein sending further includes associating the event with an event type in one or more tables within the transport service, and wherein the one or more tables are searchable on the event type to locate the event for distribution to the consumer service.

20. The method of claim 15, wherein sending further includes maintaining by the transport service a last event processed for each of the one or more actions of the consumer service.

21. The method of claim 15 further including, maintaining processing statistics associated with the event as it progresses from the producer service to the transport service and is processed by the consumer service.

29. A machine readable medium embodying instructions that, when executed by a machine, cause the machine to perform any one of the claims 15 or 22.

22. A method, including:

generating a plurality of events in response to a detected action;

assigning each of the events with an event type;

storing each of the events in one or more data store tables in response to each event'"'"'s assigned event type; and

distributing batches of the events having a same event type from the one or more data store tables to select consumer services that process the batches.

23. The method of claim 22, wherein generating further includes identifying the detected action as at least one of a merchant issuing directives associated with selling a good or a service online and a resource logging onto to a service.

24. The method of claim 22 further including, processing the method across a plurality of processors in parallel.

25. The method of claim 22, wherein storing further includes storing at least two of the events having a same event type in two different ones of the data store tables.

26. The method of claim 22, wherein distributing further includes load balancing the distribution of the batches in response to current processing loads associated with the select consumer services or in response to current processing loads associated with devices executing the select consumer services.

27. The method of claim 22, wherein distributing further includes asynchronously distributing the batches to the select consumer services.

28. The method of claim 22, wherein distributing further includes distributing at least one of the batches to at least two different ones of the select consumer services for processing.