Impact Propagation in a Directed Acyclic Graph Having Restricted Views

• US 20090157724A1
• Filed: 12/14/2007
• Published: 06/18/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 12/14/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: BMC Software Incorporated (KKR & Co., Inc.)
• Original Assignee: BMC Software Incorporated (KKR & Co., Inc.)
• Inventors: De Peuter, Geert, Bonnell, David
• Granted Patent: US 8,051,164 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management

Abstract

Service impact data is efficiently propagated in a directed acyclic graph with restricted views. One or more service components, impact rules and business rules are grouped together into a directed acyclic graph and a related metadata array. Impact propagation uses related metadata array to minimize traversal of the graph. As nodes of the graph are updated to propagate impact data, a determination is made as to when no further impact propagation is required. Subsequently, calculations are terminated without having to traverse the entire graph. This method allows a system or business administrator to view and receive real-time notification of the impacted state of all nodes in the graph that are available to their permitted view. Restricted views ensure that available service impact data is only displayed to end users having the proper authorization to view the underlying impact model data.

Claims

1. A service model impact propagation method, comprising:

creating a data structure of a service impact model, the data structure having nodes representing components of the service impact model and having impact relationships between at least some of the nodes;

associating at least two views with a first of the nodes, the at least two views having different access to node information;

associating a first count with a first of the at least two views, the first count tracking at least one state for those nodes associated with the first view having impact relationships with the first node;

associating a second count with a second of the at least two views, the second count tracking the at least one state for those nodes associated with the second view having impact relationships with the first node;

receiving a request for information about the first node, the request associated with one of the first or second views; and

returning, in response to the request, a resultant state of the first node derived from the first and second counts based on the associated view of the request.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the data structure comprises a directed acyclic graph having the nodes for the components and having directed edges for the impact relationships.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein associating the at least two views with the first node comprises dynamically allocating storage for the at least two views when needed.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein associating the first view with the first node comprises associating a global view with the first node, the global view permitting access to node information of all of the nodes.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein associating the second view with the first node comprises associating a restricted view with the nodes, the restricted view restricting access to node information of at least some of the nodes.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one state is selected from the group consisting of—

at least one of a warning status, an alarm status, and an OK status for the components represented by the nodes;

at least one range of percentage availability for the components represented by the nodes; and

at least one range of throughput levels for the components represented by the nodes.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein returning the resultant state associated with the first view comprises deriving the resultant state for the first node from the first count for the at least one state.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the second count offsets the first count for those nodes in the first count associated with the second view.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein returning the resultant associated with the second view comprises deriving the resultant state for the first node by offsetting the first count with the second count for the at least one state.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

changing the at least one state of one of the nodes; and

propagating impact of the change to the at least two views of the nodes having impact relationships with the changed node.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein propagating impact of the change terminates along the impact relationships at a given one of the nodes when the at least one state determined for the given node remains unchanged.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein propagating impact of the change to the at least two views comprises modifying the first and second counts for the first node based on the impact relationships with the nodes affected by the change and based on the at least two views associated with the affected nodes.

13. A program storage device, readable by a programmable control device, comprising instructions stored on the program storage device for causing the programmable control device to implement the method of claim 1.

14. A service model impact propagation method, comprising:

creating a directed acyclic graph having nodes and directed edges, the nodes representing components of a service impact model, the directed edges representing impact relationships between at least some the components, each of the nodes having one of at least two states;

associating a plurality of views with the nodes, each of the views tracking counts of the at least two states of the nodes based on impact relationships with others of the nodes associated with the view;

receiving a request for information about a given one of the nodes, the request associated with one of the views; and

returning, in response to the request, a resultant state of the given node, the resultant state derived from the counts for the at least two states associated with the view of the request.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein associating the views with the nodes comprises associating a first view with a given one of the nodes, the first view having a first count tracking the states for those nodes associated with the first view having impact relationships with the given node.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the first view comprises a global view permitting access to node information of all of the nodes.

17. The method of claim 15, wherein associating the views comprises associating a second view with the given node, the second view having a second count tracking the states for those nodes associated with the second view having impact relationships with the given node.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein the second view comprises a restricted view restricting access to node information of at least some of the nodes.

19. The method of claim 14, further comprising:

changing at least one of the states of one of the nodes; and

propagating impact of the change to the views of the nodes having impact relationships with the changed node.

20. A program storage device, readable by a programmable control device, comprising instructions stored on the program storage device for causing the programmable control device to implement the method of claim 14.