DISTRIBUTED ANALYTICS PLATFORM

• US 20110040808A1
• Filed: 08/13/2009
• Published: 02/17/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 08/13/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Ramalingam, Ganesan, Ashok, Balasubramanyan, Rajamani, Sriram K., Joy, Joseph M.
• Granted Patent: US 9,383,970 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/812
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/20 Software design

Abstract

A platform that facilitates software application development, maintenance, and support includes a storage component that receives structured and unstructured data pertaining to at least one application subject to development, maintenance, or support and causes the structured and unstructured data to be stored in a distributed fashion over a plurality of accessible data repositories. The storage component causes the structured and unstructured data to be stored in the data repositories such that the structured and unstructured data is accessible through utilization of a common access format. An executor component executes an analytical process over the structured and unstructured data and generates a first dataset, wherein the storage component causes the first dataset to be stored in at least one of the plurality of accessible data repositories in a format that is accessible by front end analysis applications.

Claims

1. A platform that facilitates software application development, maintenance, and support comprising the following components:

a storage component that receives structured and unstructured data pertaining to at least one application subject to development, maintenance, or support and causes the structured and unstructured data to be stored in a distributed fashion over a plurality of accessible data repositories, wherein the storage component causes the structured and unstructured data to be stored in the data repositories such that the structured and unstructured data is accessible through utilization of a common access format; and

an executor component that executes an analytical process over the structured and unstructured data and generates a first dataset, wherein the storage component causes the first dataset to be stored in at least one of the plurality of accessible data repositories in a format that is accessible by third party analysis programs.

2. The platform of claim 1, wherein the executor component is distributed across multiple computing devices.

3. The platform of claim 1, wherein the structured data comprises bug reports and binaries and the unstructured data comprises emails.

4. The platform of claim 1, wherein the storage component receives data in a streaming fashion and selectively samples the received to generate sampled data, wherein the storage component causes the sampled data to be stored in the data repositories such that the sampled data is accessible through utilization of the common access format.

5. The platform of claim 1, wherein the storage component causes the structured and unstructured data to be stored in a relational table across the plurality of accessible data repositories.

6. The platform of claim 1, wherein the storage component causes the structured and unstructured data to be stored as relationship graphs.

7. The platform of claim 1, further comprising a versioner component that assigns version information to structured and unstructured data when the structured and unstructured data is received by the storage component.

8. The platform of claim 1, further comprising a tracker component that monitors identities of individuals that have accessed data in the plurality of accessible data repositories.

9. The platform of claim 1, wherein the executor component accesses a plurality of defined libraries when executing the analytical process over the structured and unstructured data.

10. The platform of claim 1, wherein the front end applications comprise a first application that is configured to output a ranked list of bug data pertaining to a query issued by a user.

11. The platform of claim 10, wherein the front end applications comprises a second application that automatically constructs usage protocols that describe how client code employs an Application Programming Interface.

12. The platform of claim 1, further comprising a privacy component that enforces privacy restrictions pertaining to multiple different types of data.

13. The platform of claim 1, wherein the storage component assigns version information to the first dataset.

14. The platform of claim 1, wherein the plurality of accessible data repositories are located in separate countries.

15. The platform of claim 1, wherein the executor component executes a plurality of analysis programs in parallel over at least a subset of the plurality of accessible data repositories.

16. The platform of claim 1, wherein the storage component is configured to automatically generate multiple copies of the structured and unstructured data.

17. A distributed software development, maintenance, and support system comprising:

a plurality of accessible data repositories, wherein the plurality of accessible data repositories comprise data pertaining to multiple software applications, wherein the data pertaining to the multiple software applications comprise bug reports, source code, and binaries, wherein the data pertaining to the multiple software applications is accessible by way of a common format;

an executor component that executes an analysis application over at least a subset of the data pertaining to the multiple software applications to generate analysis data, wherein the executor component assigns version information to the analysis data.

18. The system of claim 17, further comprising a front end application that accesses the analysis data and generates a visualization of at least a portion of the analysis data.

19. The system of claim 17, further comprising a visualizer component that causes the data pertaining to the multiple software applications to be visualized as a relationship graph.

20. A computer-readable medium comprising instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform the following acts:

receive data pertaining to software development, maintenance, or support in a streaming fashion from a plurality of computing devices;

selectively sampling the received data;

causing the received data to be stored in a canonical format such that the received data is accessible by way of a common query format;

assigning version data to the received data to indicate a version pertaining to the received data;

executing an analysis application over the received data and outputting a first dataset upon executing the analysis application over the received data;

assigning version information to the first dataset to indicate a version pertaining to the first dataset; and

automatically generating at least one copy of the received data and the first dataset.