Automatic Reconciliation of Discrepancies in Asset Attribute Values

• US 20090019089A1
• Filed: 07/09/2007
• Published: 01/15/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 07/09/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Alonzo, Jason Aron, Yee, John Leong, Apte, Umesh Madhav
• Granted Patent: US 8,095,573 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/087 Inventory or stock management, e.g. order filling, procurement or balancing against orders
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/04 Trading; Exchange, e.g. stocks, commodities, derivatives or currency exchange

Abstract

Discrepancies in two sets of asset data for an organization are identified and automatically reconciled. One set of asset data may be compiled using automatic physical discovery software while the other set is from a financial system of the organization. Automatic reconciliation is performed according to user-configurable rules and corresponding user-configurable actions.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

providing a first repository with first asset information;

providing a second repository with second asset information;

comparing the first asset information with the second asset information to find exceptions, wherein an exception occurs when a user-configurable rule is satisfied; and

performing an automatic user-configurable action for an exception.

2. The method of claim 1 where the first asset information is created using a first technique and the second asset information is created using a second technique, different from the first technique.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the first asset information is created using asset discovery software.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the automatic user-configurable action comprises updating the second asset information with an attribute value found in the first asset information.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the automatic user-configurable action comprises deleting an attribute value from the second asset information.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the automatic user-configurable action comprises making a change to the second asset information.

7. A method comprising:

providing first asset information which is compiled through automatic discovery;

providing second asset information;

comparing the first asset information with the second asset information to find exceptions, wherein an exception occurs when a user-configurable rule is satisfied; and

providing user-configurable actions that can be executed for an exception, wherein there is a user-selectable option to enable or disable automatic execution of a user-configurable action for an exception.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein when automatic execution is enabled for a user-configurable action, execution of the action is automatic without requiring user authorization.

9. The method of claim 7 wherein the automatic user-configurable action comprises updating the second asset information with an attribute value found in the first asset information.

10. The method of claim 7 wherein the automatic user-configurable action comprises deleting an attribute value from the second asset information.

11. The method of claim 7 wherein the automatic user-configurable action comprises making a change to the second asset information.

12. The method of claim 7 comprising:

when automatic execution for a user-configurable action is enabled and a restriction to the user-action is specified, preventing automatic execution of the user-configurable action when the restriction is satisfied.

13. The method of claim 12 the restriction is satisfied when an IP address of a device in the first asset information is within a range of IP addresses.

14. The method of claim 7 comprising:

logging all actions automatically executed on the second asset information.

15. A computer program product embodied using a computer-readable storage medium, the computer program product comprising:

code for comparing first asset information with second asset information to find exceptions, wherein an exception occurs when a user-configurable rule is satisfied, the first asset information is stored a first respository, and the second asset information is stored in a second repository; and

code for performing an automatic user-configurable action for an exception.

16. The computer program product of claim 15 where the first asset information is created using a first technique and the second asset information is created using a second technique, different from the first technique.

17. The computer program product of claim 15 where the first asset information is compiled through automatic discovery.

18. The computer program product of claim 15 further comprising:

code for enabling or disabling execution the code for performing an automatic user-configurable action for an exception based on a user-specified option.

19. The computer program product of claim 15 further comprising:

code for updating the second asset information with an attribute value found in the first asset information.

20. The computer program product of claim 15 further comprising:

code for deleting an attribute value from the second asset information.