GROUPING EVENT NOTIFICATIONS IN A DATABASE SYSTEM

• US 20080275956A1
• Filed: 05/02/2007
• Published: 11/06/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 05/02/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: N-Lighten Technologies, Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Saxena, Abhishek, Bhatt, Neerja
• Granted Patent: US 8,065,365 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/206
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2358 Change logging, detection, and notification replication G06F16/27
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/244 Grouping and aggregation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/02 Reservations, e.g. for tickets, services or events
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/025 Coordination of plural reservations, e.g. plural trip segments, transportation combined with accommodation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/08 Insurance

Abstract

Techniques for grouping events in a computing system are provided. A registrant sends, to a database server, a request to register to receive a single notification based the occurrence of multiple events that satisfy certain criteria, referred to as grouping attributes. Such registrations are referred to as grouping registrations. An eventing mechanism in the database server receives and maintains grouping registrations. When an event is received, the eventing mechanism determines whether the event has been registered for in an active grouping registration, i.e., one whose start time has passed but whose completion criteria are not yet satisfied. If so, then the eventing mechanism updates grouping data associated with the grouping registration. When the completion criteria of a grouping registration are satisfied, the eventing mechanism sends a notification to the registrant and/or other intended recipient(s). The notification may provide a summary of all the events in the group or provide details about a single event from the group, such as the latest event.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving, from a registrant, a grouping registration that indicates the registrant'"'"'s intent to register for a single grouping notification, wherein the grouping registration specifies one or more grouping criteria;

storing information about occurrences of a plurality of events in which each event satisfies the one or more grouping criteria;

determining whether one or more completion criteria, which are associated with the grouping registration, have been satisfied; and

in response to determining that the one or more completion criteria have been satisfied, sending the single grouping notification to one or more intended recipients.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the single grouping notification is sent without sending any individual notifications of any event of the plurality of events.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein one of the one or more intended recipients is the registrant.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the registrant issued the grouping registration through an application or application server that is executing in conjunction with a relational database management server (RDBMS).

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more grouping criteria specifies at least one of time, transaction, event, or data size.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the request specifies the one or more completion criteria.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the one or more completion criteria are at least one of a length of time, a number of transactions, a number of bytes of one or more data objects, or a number of any type of event.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the request specifies what type of information the single grouping notification provides.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the single grouping notification provides at least one of (a) a summary of the plurality of events, or (b) enough details about the last event that occurred in the plurality of events as if the grouping registration request was for a notification of a single event.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the request specifies a time to begin grouping events that satisfy the one or more grouping criteria.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the request specifies a number of times a different set of events are grouped and single grouping notifications are sent to the one or more intended recipients.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining whether a particular event that has occurred is for a grouping registration or a non-grouping registration; and

if a particular event is for a particular non-grouping registration, then immediately sending a notification to one or more intended recipients of the notification.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

for each occurrence of an event of the plurality of events, determining whether one or more completion criteria associated with any grouping registration, of a plurality of grouping registrations, have been satisfied; and

if the one or more completion criteria associated with one or more grouping registrations of the plurality of grouping registrations, have been satisfied, then, for each of the one or more grouping registrations, sending a grouping notification to the one or more intended recipients of said each of the one or more grouping registrations.

14. The method of claim 1, further comprising executing a plurality of slave processes, wherein:

each slave process of the plurality of slave processes may update grouping data associated with the grouping registration; and

a single process is designated as being allowed to send the single grouping notification.

15. The method of claim 1, further comprising maintaining statistics for each registration of a plurality of registrations that have been received.

19. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 1.

20. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 2.

21. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 3.

22. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 4.

23. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 5.

24. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 6.

25. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 7.

26. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 8.

27. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 9.

28. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 10.

29. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 11.

30. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 12.

31. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 13.

32. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 14.

33. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 15.

16. A method comprising:

receiving a grouping registration from a registrant, wherein the grouping registration specifies one or more grouping criteria;

storing information about occurrences of a plurality of events that satisfy the one or more grouping criteria;

determining whether one or more completion criteria, associated with the grouping registration, are satisfied; and

in response to determining that the one or more completion criteria are satisfied, performing one or more actions.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein performing one or more actions includes initiating a PL/SQL procedure call.

34. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 16.

35. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 17.

18. A method comprising:

receiving, from an application, a request to be notified about occurrences of specified events relative to a database;

storing information about occurrences of the specified events;

determining whether specified criteria have been satisfied;

in response to determining that the specified criteria have been satisfied, sending, to the application, one of;

(a) data that summarizes the information; and

(b) data pertaining to only a most recent occurrence of an event within the specified events.

36. A machine-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 18.