Reusable measures

• US 7,383,159 B1
• Filed: 12/13/2005
• Issued: 06/03/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 12/13/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Teradata US, Inc. (Teradata Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Teradata US, Inc. (Teradata Corporation)
• Inventors: Kennedy, Steven, Chaves, Michael, Lee, Harold, Figge, Jason, Fu, Henry, Shelton, Scott
• Primary Examiner(s): Barlow, Jr.; John E.
• Assistant Examiner(s): Le; John H
• Application Number:
  US11/301,977
• Time in Patent Office: 903 Days
• Field of Search: 702/119, 702/123, 702/189, 705/14, 705/7, 709/224, 707/2, 707/4, 707/101, 707/102, 707/10, 707/200
• US Class Current: 702/189
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2428 Query predicate definition using graphical user interfaces, including menus and forms G06F16/2423 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99943 Generating database or data structure, e.g. via user interface

Abstract

Techniques are presented for reusing business measures within a data store. A measure is associated with a measure type. Each measure is associated with a particular data store schema or schema element and includes metadata for fields and calculations against those fields. Requestors can select existing measures, create new measures, delete existing measures, and/or modify existing measures. A measure, when processed against the data store, produces results from a data store that are associated with the data store schema or the schema element and which conform to the fields and calculations defined within the measure'"'"'s metadata.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

presenting a list of measure types and schema elements against which measures associated with the measure type can be processed;

receiving a selection for a desired measure type and one or more schema elements from the list;

presenting a new list for available measures defined within the desired measure type;

receiving a new selection for a desired measure from the new list; and

presenting metadata for the desired measure to a requester, wherein the metadata defines processing associated with the desired measure which is to be processed against the one or more selected schema elements, wherein each of the available measures and the desired measure are aggregations associated with multiple calculations, and wherein at least one of the available measures uses multiple layers of aggregation as a two-step aggregation, and wherein the presented metadata includes a description of configured parameters for processing the desired measure, the description includes an analysis schema and level for a data store being used with the desired measure, calculation information for the desired measure, filter information that can be used with the desired measure, ordering information for the desired measure, and display information for the desired measure, and wherein the description describes how the desired measure goes about achieving a calculation associated with the calculation information.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising, identifying a data store schema for the desired measure.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising, re-iterating the method one or more additional times for different desired measures, wherein the different desired measures are restricted for use against an identified data store schema or schema element.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein presenting the list further includes presenting the measure types as at least one of an attribute measure type, a percentile profiling measure type, a segment count measure type, a schema count measure type, and a tables and fields measure type.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein presenting the metadata further includes presenting a description for using the desired measure.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising, processing the desired measure at the request of the requester against one or more data stores.

7. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

receiving modifications to the metadata that defines a custom aggregation to perform with the desired measure; and

associating modifications and the custom aggregation with a business analysis module of the requestor.

8. A method, comprising:

receiving a desired measure type;

presenting generic metadata associated with a generic measure for the desired measure type, and wherein the presented generic metadata includes a description of configured parameters for processing the generic measure, the description includes an analysis schema and level for a data store being used with the generic measure, calculation information for the generic measure, filter information that can be used with the generic measure, ordering information for the generic measure, and display information for the generic measure, and wherein the description describes how the generic measure goes about achieving a calculation associated with the calculation information;

receiving modifications to the generic metadata;

identifying a data store schema and schema element for use with the generic measure; and

storing the modified generic measure as a new measure of the desired measure type and which is associated with the data store schema and the schema element, and wherein the new measure is an aggregation associated with multiple calculations, and wherein the aggregation is a two-step aggregation that utilizes multiple layers of aggregation.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein receiving modifications further includes receiving one or more fields associated with the data store schema or the schema element and one or more calculations to perform on the fields.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein receiving the modifications further includes identifying the one or more calculations as at least one of an average calculation, a count operation, a count distinct operation, a maximum operation, a minimum operation, a sum operation, a variance operation, a cumulative operation, a grouping operation, and a custom-defined operation.

11. The method of claim 9 further comprising, receiving additional calculations associated with a second aggregation to process against results of the one or more calculations.

12. The method of claim 8, wherein presenting further includes identifying the generic measure as a previously used measure that is associated with the data store schema already.

13. The method of claim 8 further comprising, establishing a rule for the new measure, wherein the rule enforces use of the new measure with the data store schema or the schema element.

14. A system comprising:

a data store implemented in and embodied on a machine-readable medium as a database; and

a measure editor implemented in and embodied on the machine-readable medium and to be processed by a machine, wherein the measure editor is to interact with the data store and with a requester to build a business analysis module, and wherein the measure editor is to identify measures associated with selected measure types and is to assemble select ones of the measures for use in the business analysis module, and wherein the measure types, the measures, and business data, which the business analysis module processes against, reside in the data store and process against requestor identified data store schema elements, and wherein each measure is associated with an aggregation of multiple calculations that process against selective portions of the business data, and wherein at least one measure is a two-step aggregation that utilizes multiple layers of aggregation, and wherein generic metadata is presented with the measures, the presented generic metadata includes descriptions of configured parameters for processing the measures, the description includes an analysis schema and level for a data store being used with the measures, calculation information for the measures, filter information that can be used with the measures, ordering information for the measures, and display information for the measures, and wherein the description describes how the measures go about achieving calculations associated with the calculation information.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the measure editor is to permit the requestor to at least one of create new measure types and to create new measures within the data store.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the measure editor is to permit the requestor to modify the generic metadata associated with a particular selected measure and to record the modification as a new instance of a new measure within the data store.

17. The system of claim 14, wherein the measure editor is to permit the requestor to delete a particular selected measure from the data store.

18. The system of claim 14, wherein the measure editor is to enforce a data store schema or a schema element associated with selected measures and prevent a different schema or different schema element from being associated with the selected measures within the business analysis module.

19. The method of claim 14, wherein the business analysis module includes one or more aggregation calculations for the business data and for results associated with processing the select ones of the measures against the business data.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein a number of the one or more aggregation calculations are at least one of selected from a list and custom-defined by the requester.