Information server and pluggable data sources

• US 7,493,311 B1
• Filed: 06/30/2003
• Issued: 02/17/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 08/01/2002
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Chen, Zhong, Wigton, Robert S., Westcott, Derek R., Bartlow, John R., Cutsinger, Paul L., Tan, Lei, Molloy, Rick
• Primary Examiner(s): Mahmoudi; Tony
• Assistant Examiner(s): Kim; Paul
• Application Number:
  US10/610,258
• Time in Patent Office: 2,059 Days
• Field of Search: 707/4, 707/10, 707/104.1, 709/245, 709/315
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2471 Distributed queries
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99934 Query formulation, input preparation, or translation

Abstract

An information server may function as a centralized query broker that accepts queries from query clients, dispatches queries to potentially disparate data sources, and returns query results to query clients. An information server may centralize information access and security/control operations and may provide a set of uniform interfaces for accessing various types of data sources. A pluggable data source interface may be used for extending the data and actions that are available to an information server. The queries that arrive at the data sources are typically simple queries, which contain no sub-query addressing to a different data source. To make a data source pluggable, a data source may expose a standard interface and may store information about the data source'"'"'s existence so that an information server will be able to determine, from the stored information, which data sources are available for responding to queries in the information server system.

Claims

1. An information-server system comprising:

at least one pluggable data source, registration information of which is stored in an information server, the registration information indicating the at least one pluggable data source'"'"'s existence;

wherein the information server uses the stored registration information to determine which data sources are available for responding to queries from the information server;

wherein the information server system is a Money Information Server (MIS) system which includes said pluggable data source, said pluggable data source provides information regarding the query client'"'"'s financial data file in response to the queries from the information server;

a set of uniform access interfaces;

at least one query client that uses the set of uniform access interfaces to send to the information server a first query at least a portion of which is to be dispatched by the information server to the at least one pluggable data source, wherein said portion includes information regarding the query client'"'"'s financial data stored on said at least one pluggable data source;

a persistence store for storing the first query if said at least one pluggable data source is not available to respond to the first query, wherein an acknowledgement code is sent to the information server the first query is queued up successfully;

wherein the information server uses the set of uniform access interfaces to dispatch to the at least one pluggable data source, a second query, when the pluggable data source becomes available, the information server accesses the persistence store to retrieve the first query and uses the first query to send the second query which includes at least said portion of the first query;

wherein the at least one pluggable data source uses the set of uniform access interfaces to return to the information server a first query result based on the received second query from the information server;

wherein the information server uses the set of uniform access interfaces to send to the query client a processed second query result based on the first query and the first query result.

2. The information-server system of claim 1, wherein the first query causes at least one of:

reading data from the at least one pluggable data source, writing data to the at least one pluggable data source, and instructing the at least one pluggable data source to perform a specified action.

3. The information-server system of claim 1, wherein the first query queries a plurality of the at least one pluggable data sources.

4. The information-server system of claim 3, wherein the second query queries no more than one of the at least one pluggable data sources.

5. The information-server system of claim 3, wherein the first query result contains information from no more than one of the at least one pluggable data sources.

6. The information-server system of claim 5, wherein the second query result contains information from the plurality of the at least one pluggable data sources.

7. The information-server system of claim 1, wherein the second query includes a data source-specific portion of the first query.

8. The information-server system of claim 1, wherein the second query is dispatched to the at least one pluggable data source in accordance with a portion of the first query that is information server-specific and that specifies to which data source the information server should dispatch the query.

9. The information-server system of claim 1, wherein the information server dispatches the second query in accordance with resource-location information contained in a data-source map.

10. The information-server system of claim 1, wherein the information server dispatches the second query to a fallback pluggable data source when a primary pluggable data source is unavailable.

11. The information-server system of claim 1, wherein, upon unavailability of the at least one pluggable data source, the information server stores the second query so that the second query can be sent to the at least one pluggable data source when the at least one pluggable data source becomes available to provide the first query result.

12. The information-server system of claim 11, wherein, after the at least one pluggable data source transitions from unavailable to available, the information server sends the stored second query to the at least one pluggable data source.

13. The information-server system of claim 1, wherein the information server system includes an authentication layer that prevents unauthorized access to the at least one pluggable data source.

14. The information-server system of claim 1, wherein the uniform access interfaces include two or more of the following interfaces:

Extensible Markup Language (XML) interfaces, Component Object Model (COM) interfaces, Document Object Model (DOM) interfaces, and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) interfaces.

15. The information-server system of claim 1, wherein said pluggable data source is implemented as a Component Object Model (COM) server wherein the COM server is constructed as either an out-of-proc server or in-proc server.

16. The information-server system of claim 1, wherein the MIS system periodically examines the persistence store and polls the availability of the pluggable data sources and issues queries based on the examination results.

17. The information-server system of claim 1, wherein an interface of the pluggable data source is self-registering and self-describing at install time to the MIS system so that additional pluggable data sources can be added without modifying the MIS system.

18. The information-server system of claim 1, wherein one or more of the following pluggable data sources can be added to the MIS system:

Open Financial Data (OFD) source, User Profile Store (UPS) data source, and UPS-OFD source.