WEB SERVICES DATA AGGREGATION SYSTEM AND METHOD

• US 20080052294A1
• Filed: 03/19/2007
• Published: 02/28/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 09/26/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Lee, Howard, Larkin, Michael
• Granted Patent: US 7,933,891 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/10
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/00 Information retrieval; Database structures therefor; File system structures therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/903 Querying for retrieval from the web G06F16/953
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/06 Buying, selling or leasing transactions
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/51 Discovery or management thereof, e.g. service location protocol [SLP] or web services

Abstract

A method and system for collecting and reviewing data related to web services receives service criteria from a service requester, selects candidate services that match the service criteria, invokes the selected candidate services, and aggregates results provided by the candidate services. In conjunction with aggregating results, the method and system builds service result objects conforming to a composite schema constructed from the various result schemas. To increase the utility of the aggregated results, metadata such as an invocation timestamp are also attached to each service result object. Result values are inspected and enumerated within a results table that may be used to determine which service result objects contain a particular result value.

Claims

1. A system for collecting and accessing data related to Web Services, the system comprising:

at least one registry configured to store descriptions of services;

a candidate selection module configured to receive service criteria from a service requester, access the descriptions of services, and provide a list of candidate services that match the service criteria;

a dispatch module configured to receive the list of candidate services and invoke each service contained therein; and

a data aggregation module configured to aggregate results provided by the invoked services.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the data aggregation module is further configured to construct a composite schema associated with the aggregated results.

4. The system of claim 2, wherein the data aggregation module is configured to construct the composite schema by:

examining an element type within a results schema;

conducting a test to determine if the composite schema contains sufficient entries corresponding to the element type; and

if the composite schema does not lack sufficient entries, mapping the element to the composite schema.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the data aggregation module is configured to aggregate results by:

examining a value within a data object;

creating a new list if the examined value is previously unknown; and

adding a reference to the data object within a list corresponding to the examined value.

3. (canceled)

6. A method for collecting and accessing data related to Web Services, the method comprising:

receiving service criteria from a service requester;

selecting candidate services that match the service criteria;

invoking the candidate services; and

aggregating results provided by the candidate services.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the service criteria comprises name-value pairs.

8. The method of claim 6, wherein aggregating results further comprises aggregating metadata.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the metadata includes invocation timestamps.

10. The method of claim 6, wherein aggregating results comprises constructing a composite schema associated with the aggregated results.

12. The system of claim 10, wherein the data aggregation module is configured to construct the composite schema by:

examining an element type within a results schema;

conducting a test to determine if the composite schema contains sufficient entries corresponding to the element type; and

if the composite schema does not lack sufficient entries, mapping the element to the composite schema.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising adding an element to the composite schema if the composite schema lacks sufficient entries.

15. The method of claim 6, wherein aggregating results further comprises building service result objects and mapping result values to service result objects.

16. The method of claim 12, wherein mapping result values comprises:

examining a value within a data object; and

adding a reference to the data object within a list corresponding to the examined value.

18. The method of claim 15, wherein comparing the examined value with known values comprises generating a key and accessing a table.

19. The method of claim 6, wherein selecting candidate services comprises searching a registry.

11. (canceled)

14. The method of claim 11, wherein aggregating results further comprises building service result objects conforming to the composite schema.

17. The method of claim 14, further comprising:

comparing the examined value with known values; and

creating a new list when the examined value is previously unknown.

20. An apparatus for collecting and accessing data related to Web Services, the apparatus comprising:

means for storing descriptions of services;

means for receiving service criteria from a service requester, accessing the descriptions of services, and providing a list of candidate services that match the service criteria;

means for receiving the list of candidate services and invoking each service contained therein; and

means for constructing a composite schema and aggregating results provided by the invoked services.

21. An article of manufacture comprising a program storage medium readable by a processor and embodying one or more instructions executable by processor to perform a method for collecting and accessing data related to Web Services, the method comprising:

receiving service criteria from a service requester;

selecting candidate services that match the service criteria;

invoking the candidate services; and

aggregating results provided by the candidate services.

22. The article of manufacture of claim 21, wherein the service criteria comprises name-value pairs.

23. The article of manufacture of claim 21, wherein aggregating results further comprises aggregating metadata.

24. The article of manufacture of claim 22, wherein the metadata includes invocation timestamps.

25. The article of manufacture of claim 21, wherein aggregating results comprises constructing a composite schema associated with the aggregated results.

26. (canceled)

27. The system of claim 26, wherein the data aggregation module is configured to construct the composite schema by:

examining an element type within a results schema;

conducting a test to determine if the composite schema contains sufficient entries corresponding to the element type; and

if the composite schema does not lack sufficient entries, mapping the element to the composite schema.

28. (canceled)

29. A method for aggregating data from individual sources, the method comprising:

examining a value within a data object;

creating a new list when the examined value is previously unknown; and

adding a reference to the data object within a list corresponding to the examined value.