SYSTEM FOR THE DISCOVERY AND PROVISIONING OF ARTIFACTS AND COMPOSITES

• US 20120216180A1
• Filed: 03/04/2012
• Published: 08/23/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 06/27/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Fischer, Peter, Haddorp, Hendrik, Koeth, Oliver, Nauerz, Andreas
• Granted Patent: US 9,354,848 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/168
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/36 Software reuse
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/60 Software deployment

Abstract

The present invention relates to software development in a networked environment, and in particular to method and system for automatically assisted generation of composite applications (44) which are composed of a plurality of instantiable components,

wherein a composite application infrastructure (CAI) component (15) handles application instances (19) during runtime and manages connections and data flow between said components of a composite application,
and wherein a templating application infrastructure (TAI) component (13) manages templates (23) which contain references to said instantiable components.

Claims

1. A method for automatically assisted generation of composite applications (44) which are composed of a plurality of instantiable components, wherein a composite application infrastructure (CAI) component (15) handles application instances (19) during runtime and manages connections and data flow between said components of a composite application, and wherein a templating application infrastructure (TAI) component (13) manages templates (23) which contain references to said instantiable components, and in which method said templates (23) define the requirements and specifications of said components of said application, and wherein said templates (23) serve as an input for instantiating said composite application, characterised by an automatic component discovery procedure comprising the steps of:

a) dynamically accessing (420) a data source (32) comprising one or more components being potentially suitable for being used within said composite application (44),

b) parsing (430) said data source (32) for a predetermined searched component according to a predetermined functionality specification standard,

c) ranking (730) found components according to predetermined ranking criteria,

d) defining a list (60) of selected usable components from said ranking,

e) storing (440) at least a subset of said selected components locally,

f) automatically deploying (660) said composite application (44) from said selected components.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein said steps a) and b) are implemented within a discovery component (24), as a part of an artefact registry service, requestable via a network request by an application instantiation component (21) implemented as a part of the template application infrastructure of said portal.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein said templating application infrastructure (13) includes a meta data collection means (48) comprising meta-data about said components, and a lookup component (42), which when a template is instantiated, interprets meta data of a component description and searches for suitable components in a local list (27) of components and/or in a remote data collection (30, 32) by using a discovery component (24) as a part of a remote service.

4. The method according to claim 1, further comprising the step of:

discovering components from data sources located local or remote,

automatically installing a discovered component into said composite application.

5. The method according to claim 1, wherein a component used for an instantiation of a composite application (44) is automatically monitored (520) for updates thereof,

in case a new update is discovered, checking if its requirements comply with those of said composite application (44),

if it complies automatically binding (540) said new updated component into said composite application.

6-7. -7. (canceled)