ON-DEMAND GENERATION OF CORRELATED COLLECTIONS OF MASHABLE DATA FROM DISTRIBUTED, NON-HOMOGENEOUS DATA SOURCES

• US 20120265780A1
• Filed: 04/14/2011
• Published: 10/18/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 04/14/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Gerard, Scott N., Gerken, John K. III
• Granted Patent: US 9,053,184 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/769
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking

Abstract

Embodiments of the present invention provide a method, system and computer program product for the on-demand generation of correlated collections of mashable data from distributed, heterogeneous data sources. In an embodiment of the invention, a method for on-demand generation of correlated collections of mashable data from distributed, heterogeneous data sources is provided. The method includes receiving a request for a data feed from a widget in a mashup rendered in a content browser executing in memory of a computer. The method further includes inspecting a virtual database of data aggregated from different data sources over a computer communications network to locate data requisite to returning the data feed to the widget in the mashup. The method yet further includes querying the data of the virtual database to produce the data feed. Finally, the method includes returning the data feed in the format specified to the widget in the mashup.

Claims

1. A method for on-demand generation of correlated collections of mashable data from distributed, heterogeneous data sources, the method comprising:

receiving a request for a data feed from a widget in a mashup rendered in a content browser executing in memory of a computer;

inspecting a virtual database of data aggregated from different data sources over a computer communications network to locate data requisite to returning the data feed to the widget in the mashup;

querying the data of the virtual database to produce the data feed; and

,

returning the data feed to the widget in the mashup.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising responding to a failure to locate the data requisite to returning the data feed by retrieving the data requisite to returning the data feed from at least one of the data sources over the computer communications network.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising formatting the data feed before returning the data feed to the widget in the mashup in a format consistent with a specified markup language.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

caching the data feed in a cache; and

,

satisfying subsequent requests for the data feed from the cache and not the virtual database.

5. A content aggregation data processing system configured for on-demand generation of correlated collections of mashable data from distributed, heterogeneous data sources, the system comprising:

a host server with at least one processor and memory and configured for communicative coupling to a plurality of data sources and also a plurality of different computers over a computer communications network, each of the computers comprising a content browser rendering a mashup of widgets;

a virtual database disposed in the memory of the host server, the virtual database providing an application programming interface (API) supporting query operations against data stored in the virtual database; and

,

a correlation engine executing in the memory of the host server and coupled to the virtual database, the correlation engine comprising program code that when executed by the host server retrieves data requisite to respond to a data feed request from a widget in a mashup from at least one of the data sources, and stores the retrieved data in the virtual database for querying through the API by a feed generator for the widget in the mashup.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the data feed is provided to the widget for the mashup by way of a representational state transfer (REST) service.

7. The system of claim 5, wherein the data feed is provided to the widget in the mashup by way of a really simple syndication (RSS) feed.

8. The system of claim 5, further comprising a cache into which the data feed is stored for subsequent retrieval in response to a similar data feed request.

9. A computer program product for on-demand generation of correlated collections of mashable data from distributed, heterogeneous data sources, the computer program product comprising:

a computer readable storage medium having computer readable program code embodied therewith, the computer readable program code comprising;

computer readable program code for receiving a request for a data feed from a widget in a mashup;

computer readable program code for inspecting a virtual database of data aggregated from different data sources over a computer communications network to locate data requisite to returning the data feed to the widget in the mashup;

computer readable program code for querying the data of the virtual database to produce the data feed; and

,

computer readable program code for returning the data feed to the widget in the mashup.

10. The computer program product of claim 9, further comprising computer readable program code for responding to a failure to locate the data requisite to returning the data feed by retrieving the data requisite to returning the data feed from at least one of the data sources over the computer communications network.

11. The computer program product of claim 9, further comprising computer readable program code for formatting the data feed before returning the data feed to the widget in the mashup in a format consistent with a specified markup language.

12. The computer program product of claim 9, further comprising:

computer readable program code for caching the data feed in a cache; and

,

computer readable program code for satisfying subsequent requests for the data feed from the cache and not the virtual database.