SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR CONDITIONING THE DISTRIBUTION OF DATA IN A HIERARCHICAL DATABASE

• US 20110078200A1
• Filed: 09/30/2009
• Published: 03/31/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 09/30/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Red Hat, Inc. (International Business Machines Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Red Hat, Inc. (International Business Machines Corporation)
• Inventors: WILLIAMSON, Eric
• Granted Patent: US 8,984,013 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/792
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/282 Hierarchical databases, e.g. IMS, LDAP data stores or Lotus Notes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/83 Querying

Abstract

Embodiments relate to systems and methods for conditioning the distribution of data in a hierarchical database. A data store can store data in a hierarchical format. Higher-level data, such as yearly profit, may be desired to be spread from parent nodes to lower nodes, such as quarters. Parent nodes can be associated with a set of programmatic placeholder nodes. A spreading tool can insert child nodes representing quarters, months, or other at insertion point(s) represented or encoded by a set of placeholder nodes, dividing quantities appropriately. In aspects, data can be spread from multiple parents at once. In aspects, the spreading tool can access or host sequence logic to ensure that data is spread in an order that takes dependencies, formatting, output connections, or other factors into account.

Claims

1. A method of processing data, comprising:

receiving a set of data to be inserted in a hierarchical database;

associating a set of child nodes with at least one parent node in the hierarchical database;

accessing a set of spreading rules to determine conditioning required to distribute data from the at least one parent node to the corresponding set of child nodes;

generating a conditioned distribution of the data based on the set of spreading rules; and

distributing the set of data from the at least one parent node into the corresponding set of child nodes based on the conditioned distribution.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the set of spreading rules comprises at least one of a set of rules related to data dependencies in the set of data, a set of rules related to the formatting of the set of data, and a set of rules related to routing of output of the set of child nodes to other nodes.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the set of spreading rules comprises a set of rules related to data dependencies in the set of data, and the set of rules related to data dependencies in the set of data comprises a set of sequence rules specifying an order of distribution of the set of data to the set of child nodes.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the distributing the set of data comprises distributing the set of data via a set of placeholder nodes associated with the at least one parent node.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein the set of placeholder nodes encode a set of inheritance classes defining the set of child nodes.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the set of data comprises at least one of medical, technical, scientific, or financial data.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the hierarchical database comprises at least one of an online analytical processing (OLAP) data source or an extensible markup language (XML)-based data source.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one parent node comprises a plurality of parent nodes.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the set of data distributed from at least two of the parent nodes to the corresponding set of child nodes is the same.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein the at least two of the parent nodes are located in different levels of the hierarchical database.

11. A system for database operations, comprising:

an interface to at least one hierarchical database;

a database engine, communicating with the interface, the database engine being configured to—

receive a set of data to be inserted in a hierarchical database,

associate a set of child nodes with at least one parent node in the hierarchical database,

access a set of spreading rules to determine data conditioning required to distribute data from the at least one parent node to the corresponding set of child nodes,

generate a conditioned distribution of the data based on the set of spreading rules, and

distribute the set of data from the at least one parent node into the corresponding set of child nodes based on the conditioned distribution.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the set of spreading rules comprises at least one of a set of rules related to data dependencies in the set of data, a set of rules related to the formatting of the set of data, and a set of rules related to routing of output of the set of child nodes to other nodes.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the set of spreading rules comprises a set of rules related to data dependencies in the set of data, and the set of rules related to data dependencies in the set of data comprises a set of sequence rules specifying an order of distribution of the set of data to the set of child nodes.

14. The system of claim 11, wherein the distributing the set of data comprises distributing the set of data via a set of placeholder nodes associated with the at least one parent node.

15. The system of claim 13, wherein the set of placeholder nodes encode a set of inheritance classes defining the set of child nodes.

16. The system of claim 11, wherein the set of data comprises at least one of medical, technical, scientific, or financial data.

17. The system of claim 11, wherein the hierarchical database comprises at least one of an online analytical processing (OLAP) data source or an extensible markup language (XML)-based data source.

18. The system of claim 11, wherein the at least one parent node comprises a plurality of parent nodes.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the set of data distributed from at least two of the parent nodes to the corresponding set of child nodes is the same.

20. A hierarchical data store stored in a computer readable storage medium, the hierarchical data store being generated by a method of:

receiving a set of data to be inserted in the hierarchical database;

associating a set of child nodes with at least one parent node in the hierarchical database;

accessing a set of spreading rules to determine data conditioning required to distribute data from the at least one parent node to the corresponding set of child nodes;

generating a conditioned distribution of the set of data based on the set of spreading rules; and

distributing the set of data from the at least one parent node into the corresponding set of child nodes based on the conditioned distribution.