CONCEPT-BASED ANALYSIS OF STRUCTURED AND UNSTRUCTURED DATA USING CONCEPT INHERITANCE

• US 20100262620A1
• Filed: 04/14/2009
• Published: 10/14/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 04/14/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: CONQ Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Ureveal, inc.
• Inventors: Mohan, Rengaswamy
• Granted Patent: US 9,245,243 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/776
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2453 Query optimisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/248 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/242 Dictionaries
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling

Abstract

In one embodiment, a method comprises defining a set of concepts based on a first set of structured and unstructured data objects, defining a business rule based on the set of concepts, applying the business rule to a second set of structured and unstructured data objects to make a determination associated with that set, and outputting to a display information associated with the determination.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

defining a set of concepts based on a first set of structured and unstructured data objects;

defining a business rule based on the first set of concepts;

applying the business rule to a second set of structured and unstructured data objects to make a determination associated with the second set; and

outputting to a display information associated with the determination.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein a concept is defined by one or more of:

one or more words or phrases;

a presence of a text string in an unstructured data object;

a data code stored in a structured data object;

one or more other concepts different from the concept; and

a regular expression indicating a presence or absence of a text string in an unstructured data object or a data code stored in a structured data object.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the first set of structured and unstructured data objects and the second set of structured and unstructured data objects are disjoint sets.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the second set of structured and unstructured data objects is a subset of the first set of structured and unstructured data objects.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the business rule is defined by a combination of one or more rules based on one or more of:

a data code stored in a structured data object; and

a regular expression indicating presence or absence of a text string in an unstructured or structured data object.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the defining a set of concepts is performed at a first time, further comprising:

detecting, at a second time, a presence of one or more new concepts in the first set of structured and unstructured data objects that were not present in the first set of structured and unstructured data objects at the first time; and

updating the set of concepts to include the one or more new concepts.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the set of concepts is a first set of concepts, further comprising:

defining a second set of concepts, the second set of concepts including one or more concepts from the first set of concepts; and

updating the business rule based at least in part on the second set of concepts.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the defining a set of concepts includes defining a concept hierarchy based on the set of concepts.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

refining the set of concepts using one or more of;

a thesaurus;

a dictionary; and

a language relationship.

20. The method of claim 1, wherein the defining the business rule includes defining a relationship between two or more concepts, the relationship being one of:

a logical relationship;

a mathematical relationship; and

a relationship based on a linguistic grammar.

10. A method, comprising:

defining a first concept based on a first set of structured and unstructured data objects;

defining a second concept based on the first set of structured and unstructured data objects, the definition of the second concept based at least in part on at least one structured data element and at least one unstructured data element;

defining a relationship between the first concept and the second concept, the relationship specifying that the second concept is a subconcept of the first concept;

defining a business rule that includes the first concept; and

executing the business rule on a second set of structured and unstructured data objects, the executing including a first determination of a presence of the first concept in the second set, the first determination including a second determination of a presence of the second concept in the second set.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the business rule includes one or more component parts, each component part being one of:

a regular expression for determining a presence or absence of a concept in an structured or unstructured data object; and

a data code indicating presence or absence of a concept in a structured data object, wherein the executing the business rule includes executing the one or more component parts.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein the first set of structured and unstructured data objects and the second set of structured and unstructured data objects are disjoint sets.

13. The method of claim 10, wherein the second set of structured and unstructured data objects is a subset of the first set of structured and unstructured data objects.

14. The method of claim 10, wherein the first concept or the second concept is a user-defined concept.

15. A method, comprising:

retrieving a concept hierarchy, the concept hierarchy including one or more concepts based at least in part on a first set of structured and unstructured data objects;

receiving a first plurality of user input signals, each signal from the plurality of user input signals indicating a selection of one or more concepts from the concept hierarchy;

receiving a second plurality of user input signals that define a plurality of logical relationships between the selected one or more concepts, the plurality of logical relationships defining a business rule; and

executing the business rule on a second set of structured and unstructured data objects to calculate a determination associated with the second set of structured and unstructured data objects.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising:

outputting information associated with the selected one or more concepts to a display;

receiving a third plurality of user input signals responsive to the information, each user input signal from the third plurality including indication of a desired change to a definition of the one or more concepts; and

updating the definition of the selected one or more concepts based on the third plurality of user input signals.

17. The method of claim 15, further comprising:

analyzing the concept hierarchy to detect a presence of one or more relationships between one or more of the selected concepts; and

updating the concept hierarchy to define the one or more relationships.

18. The method of claim 15, further comprising:

applying the business rule to one or more sets of test data;

generating one or more reports based on the applying;

receiving a user input signal responsive to the one or more reports, the user input signal indicating a desired change to the business rule; and

updating the business rule to effectuate the desired change.

19. The method of claim 15, wherein the first set of structured and unstructured data objects and the second set of structured and unstructured data objects are disjoint sets.