RULE BASED DATA DRIVEN VALIDATION

• US 20120272221A1
• Filed: 04/22/2011
• Published: 10/25/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 04/22/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Pessoa, Carlos A. C., Ellie, Julien J., Jacoby, James T.
• Granted Patent: US 9,817,677 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/127
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4492 Inheritance

Abstract

The technology provides for rule based data driven validation in which a rule engine identifies which rules are applicable to target data items of a target data object by their data types including any inherited data types. Additionally, a condition for a rule or a rule exemption is implemented also as a rule which is processed by the rule engine like any other rule. In one embodiment, a validation system includes an abstract rule store of rule instance data items which link to corresponding concrete rules which may be in different data formats. A corresponding rule provides access to rule logic which implements the corresponding rule. A rule engine and the abstract rule store may be accessed over a network by an application requesting validation of a target data object. Furthermore, in some examples, the data driven rule store can be implemented using the Microsoft .NET™ framework.

Claims

1. A computer implemented method for rule based data driven validation comprising:

receiving over a communication network a target data object in a validation request from an executing software application;

identifying one or more target data member items of the target data object based on stored data type definitions;

identifying a data type and any inherited data type for the one or more target data member items;

identifying one or more rules applicable to each target data item based on a target data identifier associated with each applicable rule having a same data type or an inherited data type of the target data item;

executing the identified one or more applicable rules subject to rule execution criteria; and

returning a validation result data object to the software application.

2. The computer implemented method of claim 1 wherein

the target data member item is defined to be of a class data type;

and

the inherited data type of the target data member item includes any base class of the class data type.

3. The computer implemented method of claim 1 wherein

the target data identifier associated with each applicable rule is the target data identifier in a rule instance data item which links to the respective applicable rule by at least the target data identifier.

4. The computer implemented method of claim 1 wherein

rule execution criteria includes determining whether to skip execution of the applicable rule based on a result from executing another rule identified as a condition.

5. The computer implemented method of claim 1 wherein

rule execution criteria includes determining whether to alter execution of the applicable rule based on a result from executing another rule identified as a condition.

6. The computer implemented method of claim 1 wherein

the target data object is a .NET object which identifies each target data member item by a class identifier and a property identifier;

and

identifying a data type and any inherited data type for the one or more target data item members comprises using .NET functions for determining data types and class membership.

7. The computer implemented method of claim 6 wherein

executing the identified one or more applicable rules subject to rule execution criteria further comprises locating virtual machine instructions for execution of the one or more applicable rules in one or more .NET Assembly files based on a rule identifier associated with each rule.

13. The system of claim 6, wherein

at least one rule instance data item comprises a condition which is implemented as another rule instance data item accessible by the rule engine like any other rule instance data item.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein

the at least one rule instance further comprises an exemption data item;

and

the rule engine executes the rule logic corresponding to the condition implemented as another rule instance for determining whether an exemption action with respect to the corresponding rule is to be applied.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein

the exemption action comprises at least one of

skipping execution of the corresponding rule of the at least one rule instance data item;

and

overriding at least one parameter value of the corresponding rule and executing the corresponding rule using the overridden parameter value.

8. A data driven validation system comprising:

one or more processors;

a memory;

an abstract rule store stored in the memory linking one or more rules instance data items to one or more corresponding rules stored in a concrete rule store, each rule instance data item comprising a target data identifier identifying a data type of a target data item processed by its respective linked one or more corresponding rules;

a validation software interface executing on the one or more processors for receiving a validation request comprising a target data object from an executing software application, the target data object including one or more target data items of the object to be validated;

a rule engine executing on the one or more processors for accessing the one or more rule instance data items communicatively coupled to the validation software interface to receive the validation request;

the rule engine identifies one or more rule instances data items based on the target data identifier which are applicable to the one or more target data items; and

the rule engine executes rule logic of the corresponding one or more rules linked to the identified one or more rule instance data items.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein

the memory further comprises a data type definitions data store including data type definitions for one or more target data objects to be passed in one or more validation requests by the application;

and

the rule engine for identifying one or more rule instance data items which are applicable to the one or more target data items based on the target data identifier further comprises instructions for identifying one or more rule instance data items based on the target identifier having a data type inherited by the one or more target data items.

10. The system of claim 8, wherein

the rule engine aggregates a validation result value for each rule applied to each target data item of the target data object in a validation result object for the target data object;

based on the validation result values, the rule engine sets an overall validation status for the validation request; and

the validation software interface sends the validation result object to the executing software application.

11. The system of claim 8, further comprising a plurality of concrete rule stores storing rules in a plurality of concrete data formats in the memory.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the plurality of concrete data formats comprises at least one of the following:

extensible markup language (XML);

structured query language (SQL); and

.NET attributes.

16. The system of claim 8 wherein

the rule based data driven validation system is implemented using the .NET framework;

each rule instance data item of the abstract rule store comprises a target data identifier including a class identifier and a property identifier;

the rule engine further comprises a rule validator which receives the target data object as a .NET object, and each target data item of the object is identifiable by a class identifier and a property identifier; and

the rule validator using one or more .NET Reflection functions for searching class and property identifiers of rule instance data items.

17. The system of claim 16 further comprising

one or more .NET assembly files including virtual machine instructions for executing rule logic and meta data;

and

the rule validator searches the meta data using one or more .NET Reflection functions for identifying the rule logic of the corresponding rule.

18. One or more computer readable storage media having stored thereon processor executable instructions for implementing a method for a rule based data driven validation, the method comprising:

filling target data member items of a target data object with data values to be validated;

instantiating a validation result data object to receive the aggregation of individual rule results applied to respective target data member items of the target data object;

sending a validation request with the target data object over a communication network to a validation system; and

receiving the validation result object back from the validation system.

19. The one or more computer readable storage media of claim 18, wherein the method further comprises:

uploading over a communication network one or more rules in a canonical format to a validation system, the canonical format being provided by a software interface of the validation system;

generating rule logic in a format a rule engine can process for execution; and

storing the generated rule logic in memory accessible by the validation system.

20. The one or more computer readable storage media of claim 19 wherein the method further comprises:

the format the rule engine can process for execution is a virtual machine instruction format; and

uploading over the communication network a concrete rule store to a memory accessible by the validation system, each concrete rule is linked to one or more rules in the canonical format.