SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PUBLISHING AND SUBSCRIBING TO CALENDAR EVENTS INFORMATION VIA CATEGORICAL MAPPING METHODOLOGY

• US 20090112986A1
• Filed: 10/31/2007
• Published: 04/30/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 10/31/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: CACERES, Barry M.
• Granted Patent: US 9,053,466 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/204
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/109 Time management, e.g. calendars, reminders, meetings or time accounting

Abstract

A system, method and program product for publishing and subscribing to calendar events publication are disclosed. In one aspect, method and system for providing a publication of calendar events for one or more computer-based devices having a calendaring system capable of operation therein, is disclosed. The method and system comprises defining one or more calendar publication definitions. The definitions comprise an identifier for the publication and a set of criteria for qualifying calendar events from a calendar database for inclusion in and/or exclusion from the publication. The method and system include activating a publication agent for processing each publication definition by applying the qualifying criteria to the calendar database to create a subset of qualified calendar events from the calendar database to be included in the publication. Furthermore, the method and system include aggregating the qualified calendar events into a single identifiable calendar publication making the calendar publication available.

Claims

1. A method for providing a publication of calendar events for one or more computer-based devices having a calendaring system capable of operation therein, the method comprising:

defining one or more calendar publication definitions, the definitions comprising an identifier for the publication and a set of criteria for qualifying calendar events from a calendar database for inclusion in or exclusion from the publication;

activating a publication agent for processing each publication definition by applying the qualifying criteria to the calendar database to create a subset of qualified calendar events from the calendar database to be included in the publication;

aggregating the qualified calendar events into a single identifiable calendar publication; and

making the calendar publication available to one or more subscribers.

2. The method of claim 1, where the publication definition further comprises one or more transformation rules for transforming the data contained in the fields of the qualified calendar events from the source calendar database and where the publication agent further comprises, for each publication definition applying the one or more transformation rules to the qualified calendar events so that field values of the qualified calendar events are transformed from their source values before including them in the calendar publication.

3. The method of claim 2, where the publication definition further comprises one or more transformation criteria relative to the transformation rules to be used for determining whether or not the transformation rules relative to the transformation criteria should be applied to a qualified calendar event from the source calendar database and where the publication agent, for each publication definition, evaluates the one or more transformation criteria for each qualified calendar event before conditionally applying the relative transformation rules to the qualified calendar events that meet the required transformation criteria.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the publication agent is activated upon subscriber request to obtain one or more calendar publications.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the publication agent is activated as a result of a PDA synchronization process and the subscribers are PDA users.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the publication agent is automatically activated periodically to update the content of the one or more calendar publications from the most recent data in the source calendar database and where the publication agent makes the calendar publications available to an external system that will provide the calendar publications to one or more subscribers.

7. The method of claim 4, wherein the publication definition further comprises an access control list identifying subscribers who are authorized to access the calendar publication and where the publication agent utilizes the access control list from the publication definition to determine which of the one or more calendar publications the requesting subscriber is authorized to access and where the publication agent only provides the calendar publications for which the current requesting subscriber is authorized to access.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the publication definition further comprises an access control list identifying subscribers who are authorized to access the calendar publication and where the publication agent includes the access control list from the respective publication definition in each generated calendar publication so that unauthorized access to restricted publications can be prevented when an attempt is later made by the subscriber to access the publication.

9. A method for subscribing to a publication of calendar events for one or more computer-based devices having a calendaring system capable of operation therein, the method comprising:

defining one or more calendar subscription definitions, the definitions comprising;

an identifier for the subscription;

a locator or identifier to find and access a publication of calendar events; and

a transformation rule to map the calendar events from the publication to one or more categories in the subscriber calendar;

activating a subscription agent for processing each subscription definition by removing existing events in the subscriber calendar that belong to the one or more categories to which calendar events from the publication may be mapped;

retrieving the calendar events from the designated publication of calendar events;

transforming the retrieved calendar events according to the defined transformation rule in order to map the category of each event to the one or more subscriber categories for the publication; and

loading the transformed calendar events from the publication into a subscriber'"'"'s calendar database with the mapped category values.

10. The method of claim 9, where the transformation rule for mapping the calendar events to one or more specific categories in a subscription definition maps all calendar events contained in the designated publication for that subscription definition to a single specified category and where the subscription agent performs the removal process for such a subscription definition by removing all existing events in the subscriber calendar that belong to that specified one category for that subscription definition before loading the calendar events from the defined publication of that subscription definition.

11. The method of claim 9, where the transformation rule for mapping the calendar events to one or more specific categories in a subscription definition determines the mapped category for each calendar event contained in the designated publication for that subscription definition by deriving the category value by pre-pending/appending a prefix and/or suffix, respectively, to a source field from calendar event and where the subscription agent performs the removal process for such a subscription definition by removing all existing events whose categories start with and/or end-with the designated prefix and/or suffix, respectively, for that subscription definition before loading the calendar events from the defined publication of that subscription definition.

12. The method of claim 9, where the subscription definition further comprises one or more additional transformation rules for transforming the data contained in the fields of the calendar events from the publication and where the subscription agent further comprises, for each subscription definition applying the one or more additional transformation rules to the calendar events so that the field values of the qualified calendar events are transformed from their source values before loading them into a subscriber'"'"'s calendar database.

13. The method of claim 12, where the subscription definition further comprises one or more transformation criteria relative to the transformation rules to be used for determining whether or not the transformation rules relative to the transformation criteria should be applied to a calendar event from the publication and where the subscription agent further comprises, for each subscription definition, evaluating the one or more transformation criteria for each calendar event before conditionally applying the relative transformation rules to the calendar events that meet the required transformation criteria.

14. The method of claim 9, where the subscription definition further comprises a set of criteria for qualifying calendar events from the publication for inclusion in and/or exclusion from the set of calendar events from the publication that will be loaded into the subscriber'"'"'s calendar, and where the subscription agent further comprises applying the qualifying criteria to create the subset of calendar events from the publication that will be loaded into the subscriber calendar and where the subscription agent does not load those calendar events excluded from that subset into the subscriber calendar.

15. A computer readable medium containing computer program instructions for providing a publication of calendar events for one or more computer-based devices having a calendaring system capable of operation therein, the program instructions for:

defining one or more calendar publication definitions, the definitions comprising an identifier for the publication and a set of criteria for qualifying calendar events from a calendar database for inclusion in or exclusion from the publication;

activating a publication agent for processing each publication definition by applying the qualifying criteria to the calendar database to create a subset of qualified calendar events from the calendar database to be included in the publication;

aggregating the qualified calendar events into a single identifiable calendar publication; and

making the calendar publication available to one or more subscribers.

16. The computer readable medium of claim 15, where the publication definition further comprises one or more transformation rules for transforming the data contained in the fields of the qualified calendar events from the source calendar database and where the publication agent further comprises, for each publication definition applying the one or more transformation rules to the qualified calendar events so that field values of the qualified calendar events are transformed from their source values before including them in the calendar publication.

17. The computer readable medium of claim 16, where the publication definition further comprises one or more transformation criteria relative to the transformation rules to be used for determining whether or not the transformation rules relative to the transformation criteria should be applied to a qualified calendar event from the source calendar database and where the publication agent, for each publication definition, evaluates the one or more transformation criteria for each qualified calendar event before conditionally applying the relative transformation rules to the qualified calendar events that meet the required transformation criteria.

18. The computer readable medium of claim 16, wherein the publication agent is activated upon subscriber request to obtain one or more calendar publications.

19. The computer readable medium of claim 18, wherein the publication agent is activated as a result of a PDA synchronization process and the subscribers are PDA users.

20. The computer readable medium of claim 16, wherein the publication agent is automatically activated periodically to update the content of the one or more calendar publications from the most recent data in the source calendar database and where the publication agent makes the calendar publications available to an external system that will provide the calendar publications to one or more subscribers.

21. The computer readable medium of claim 19, wherein the publication definition further comprises an access control list identifying subscribers who are authorized to access the calendar publication and where the publication agent utilizes the access control list from the publication definition to determine which of the one or more calendar publications the requesting subscriber is authorized to access and where the publication agent only provides the calendar publications for which the current requesting subscriber is authorized to access.

22. A computer readable medium containing computer program instructions for one or more computer-based devices having a calendaring system capable of operation therein, the method comprising:

defining one or more calendar subscription definitions, the definitions comprising;

an identifier for the subscription;

a locator or identifier to find and access a publication of calendar events; and

a transformation rule to map the calendar events from the publication to one or more categories in the subscriber calendar; and

activating a subscription agent for processing each subscription definition by removing existing events in the subscriber calendar that belong to the one or more categories to which calendar events from the publication may be mapped;

retrieving the calendar events from the designated publication of calendar events; and

transforming the retrieved calendar events according to the defined transformation rule in order to map the category of each event to the one or more subscriber categories for the publication; and

loading the transformed calendar events from the publication into a subscriber'"'"'s calendar database with the mapped category values.

23. The computer readable medium of claim 22, where the transformation rule for mapping the calendar events to one or more specific categories in a subscription definition maps all calendar events contained in the designated publication for that subscription definition to a single specified category and where the subscription agent performs the removal process for such a subscription definition by removing all existing events in the subscriber calendar that belong to that specified one category for that subscription definition before loading the calendar events from the defined publication of that subscription definition.

24. The computer readable medium of claim 22, where the transformation rule for mapping the calendar events to one or more specific categories in a subscription definition determines the mapped category for each calendar event contained in the designated publication for that subscription definition by deriving the category value by pre-pending/appending a prefix or suffix, respectively, to a source field from calendar event and where the subscription agent performs the removal process for such a subscription definition by removing all existing events whose categories start with or end-with the designated prefix or suffix, respectively, for that subscription definition before loading the calendar events from the defined publication of that subscription definition;

and wherein the subscription definition further comprises one or more additional transformation rules for transforming the data contained in the fields of the calendar events from the publication and where the subscription agent further comprises, for each subscription definition applying the one or more additional transformation rules to the calendar events so that the field values of the qualified calendar events are transformed from their source values before loading them into a subscriber'"'"'s calendar database.

25. The computer readable medium of claim 24, where the subscription definition further comprises a set of criteria for qualifying calendar events from the publication for inclusion in or exclusion from the set of calendar events from the publication that will be loaded into the subscriber'"'"'s calendar, and where the subscription agent further comprises applying the qualifying criteria to create the subset of calendar events from the publication that will be loaded into the subscriber calendar and where the subscription agent does not load those calendar events excluded from that subset into the subscriber calendar.