Managing relationships of heterogeneous objects

• US 20090150431A1
• Filed: 12/07/2007
• Published: 06/11/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 12/07/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: SAP SE
• Original Assignee: SAP AG (SAP SE)
• Inventors: Schmidt, Olaf, Fischer, Martin P.
• Granted Patent: US 8,090,754 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/284 Relational databases
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/942 Legal/academic
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/955 Object-oriented

Abstract

Software for managing relationships between heterogeneous objects is operable to identify a target object. The software automatically determines related objects using at least one object type application programming interface (API) for an object type associated with the target object. The software is further operable to populate a relationship data structure based on the determined relationships. The software can then provide the relationship data structure to a requesting module.

Claims

1. Software for managing relationships between heterogeneous objects, the software comprising computer readable instructions embodied on tangible media and operable to:

identify a target object;

automatically determine related objects using at least one object type application programming interface (API) for an object type associated with the target object;

populate a relationship data structure based on the determined relationships; and

provide the relationship data structure to a requesting module.

2. The software of claim 1, wherein automatically determining related objects using at least one object type API for an object type associated with the target object comprises:

adding an identifier of the target object to a stack; and

while the stack is not empty,

a) popping a top identifier off of the stack;

b) adding identifiers of objects related to target object to stack; and

c) extending relationship information with related objects.

3. The software of claim 1, the target object identified by a request from the requesting module via an exposed framework API.

4. The software of claim 1, the related objects comprising at least a first related object of a first object type and a second related object of a second object type.

5. The software of claim 4, the first related object associated with a first application and the second related object associated with a second application.

6. The software of claim 4, the first related object associated with a first system architecture and the second related object associated with a second system architecture.

7. The software of claim 6, the software automatically determining the first related object and the second related object through a persistence layer.

8. The software of claim 4 further operable to:

receive a request for a query, the query comprising at least one parameter indicating a request for the first object type and the second object type;

automatically execute a first sub-query for the first object type and a second sub-query for the second object type; and

join the results of the sub-queries.

9. The software of claim 1, the requesting module comprising a remote application.

10. The software of claim 1 further operable to provide the relationship data structure to a second requesting module disparate from the first requesting module.

11. The software of claim 1 further operable to persist the relationship data structure, which comprises a directed graph where each object comprises a node and each relationship comprises an edge.

12. The software of claim 1, the software providing the relationship data structure to the requesting module by providing a reference to the relationship data structure.

13. The software of claim 1 further operable to provide visualization of the relationship data structure via at least one exposed framework API.

14. The software of claim 13, the visualization functionality implementing user-specified criteria and offering drill-down functionality into the related objects.

15. The software of claim 1 further operable to add semantic relationship information to the relationship data structure.

16. The software of claim 15, the semantic relationship information comprising:

direction of relation;

business process step that created the particular object;

protocol;

time of creation;

duration of creation time; and

conditions met for that relationship to exist.

17. The software of claim 1 further operable to:

receive identification of a new object type via an open framework API; and

wherein automatically determining related objects using the target object comprises automatically determining related objects using the target object at least partially based on the new object type.

18. The software of claim 1 further operable to automatically identify the prima nota of the target object based on the relationship data structure.