System and method for managing data in multiple bills of material over a network
First Claim
Patent Images
1. A method comprising:
- storing a database in a processing system, the database including;
a list of elements, each element having a unique identifier, one or more elements of the list of elements being for inclusion in one or more of a plurality of bills of material (BOMs); and
one or more data structures for storing the plurality of BOMs, each BOM describable as a tree with each node an element of the list of elements, elements of at least two of the BOMs associated with respective owners of a set of owners, two or more of the BOMs being associated with respective owners of the set of owners, andproviding remote access to one or more elements of information in the database to one or more users,such that the database may contain two BOMS associated with two or more different owners,the method including feature A and/or feature B,feature A including that at least one of the BOMs includes confidential information of the owner of the BOM such that that unrestricted access to the confidential information is limited to the owner and any one or more designates of the owner of the BOM, and that a first BOM of a first owner may share one or more elements of the list of elements with a second BOM of a second owner, andfeature B includingthat one or more elements in the element list are associated with a respective owner of the set of owners,that the list of elements includes an indication of ownership for each element associated with one of the owners, andthat the method further comprises restricting access to information about a particular element in the element list that is associated with a particular owner to the particular owner and any one or more designates of the particular owner.
9 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A method of storing and managing BOMs of different owners in the same environment. One or more BOMs have an owner. An owner'"'"'s BOM includes may include confidential information such that unrestricted access to the confidential information is limited to the owner and any designates of the owner. In particular, one embodiment of the invention and maintains a list of items that include the items in the BOMs of the different owners. A unique identifier is used for each item of the list. The item identifiers thus form one namespace. BOMs of different owners share data including confidential data within the same namespace.
77 Citations
100 Claims
-
1. A method comprising:
-
storing a database in a processing system, the database including; a list of elements, each element having a unique identifier, one or more elements of the list of elements being for inclusion in one or more of a plurality of bills of material (BOMs); and one or more data structures for storing the plurality of BOMs, each BOM describable as a tree with each node an element of the list of elements, elements of at least two of the BOMs associated with respective owners of a set of owners, two or more of the BOMs being associated with respective owners of the set of owners, and providing remote access to one or more elements of information in the database to one or more users, such that the database may contain two BOMS associated with two or more different owners, the method including feature A and/or feature B, feature A including that at least one of the BOMs includes confidential information of the owner of the BOM such that that unrestricted access to the confidential information is limited to the owner and any one or more designates of the owner of the BOM, and that a first BOM of a first owner may share one or more elements of the list of elements with a second BOM of a second owner, and feature B including that one or more elements in the element list are associated with a respective owner of the set of owners, that the list of elements includes an indication of ownership for each element associated with one of the owners, and that the method further comprises restricting access to information about a particular element in the element list that is associated with a particular owner to the particular owner and any one or more designates of the particular owner. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4)
-
-
5. A method comprising:
-
storing a database in a processing system, the database including; a list of elements, each element having a unique identifier, one or more of the elements being for inclusion in at least one bill of materials (BOM) of a plurality of bills of material (BOMs); and one or more BOM data structures for storing the plurality of BOMs, each BOM describable as a tree with each node an element of the list of elements and each branch of the tree defining a parent-child relationship, the one or more BOM data structures storing information on the parent-child relationships of the plurality of BOMs, two or more of the BOM being associated with a respective owner of a set of owners, and providing remote access to one or more elements of information in the database to one or more users, such that the database may contain BOMS having different owners, wherein the database further includes a list of owners in the set of owners, each owner having an entry including a unique owner identifier in the list of owners. - View Dependent Claims (6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28)
-
-
29. A method comprising:
-
storing a database in a processing system, the database including; a list of elements, each element having a unique identifier, one or more of the elements being for inclusion in at least one bill of materials (BOM) of a plurality of bills of material (BOMs); and one or more BOM data structures for storing the plurality of BOMs, each BOM describable as a tree with each node an element of the list of elements and each branch of the tree defining a parent-child relationship, the one or more BOM data structures storing information on the parent-child relationships of the plurality of BOMs, two or more of the BOM being associated with a respective owner of a set of owners, and providing remote access to one or more elements of information in the database to one or more users, such that the database may contain BOMS having different owners, wherein the database includes confidential information of at least one of the owners such that that unrestricted access to the confidential information is limited to the owner and any one or more designates of the owner, wherein one or more elements in the element list is associated with a respective owner of the set of owners, wherein the list of elements includes an indication of ownership for each element associated with one of the owners, and wherein the confidential information of an owner that owns a element in the list of elements includes confidential information in the list of elements, such that unrestricted access to confidential information about a particular element in the element list that is associated with a particular owner is limited to the particular owner and any or more designates of the particular owner.
-
-
30. A method comprising:
-
storing a database in a processing system, the database including; a list of elements, each element having a unique identifier, one or more of the elements being for inclusion in at least one bill of materials (BOM) of a plurality of bills of material (BOMs); and one or more BOM data structures for storing the plurality of BOMs, each BOM describable as a tree with each node an element of the list of elements and each branch of the tree defining a parent-child relationship, the one or more BOM data structures storing information on the parent-child relationships of the plurality of BOMs, two or more of the BOM being associated with a respective owner of the set of owners, and providing remote access to one or more elements of information in the database to one or more users, such that the database may contain BOMS having different owners, wherein the database includes confidential information of at least one of the owners such that that unrestricted access to the confidential information is limited to the owner and any one or more designates of the owner, wherein a first BOM of a first owner may share one or more elements of the list of elements with a second BOM of a second owner.
-
-
31. A method comprising:
-
storing a database in a processing system, the database including; a list of elements, each element having a unique identifier, one or more of the elements being for inclusion in at least one bill of materials (BOM) of a plurality of bills of material (BOMs); and one or more BOM data structures for storing the plurality of BOMs, each BOM describable as a tree with each node an element of the list of elements and each branch of the tree defining a parent-child relationship, the one or more BOM data structures storing information on the parent-child relationships of the plurality of BOMs, two or more of the BOM being associated with a respective owner of a set of owners, and providing remote access to one or more elements of information in the database to one or more users, such that the database may contain BOMS having different owners, wherein an element in the element list is one of the set consisting of a physical element and a process, wherein the physical element may itself be a BOM, and wherein the process may reference a set of steps or operations.
-
-
32. A method comprising:
-
storing a database in a processing system, the database including; a list of elements, each element having a unique identifier, one or more of the elements being for inclusion in at least one bill of materials (BOM) of a plurality of bills of material (BOMs); and one or more BOM data structures for storing the plurality of BOMs, each BOM describable as a tree with each node an element of the list of elements and each branch of the tree defining a parent-child relationship, the one or more BOM data structures storing information on the parent-child relationships of the plurality of BOMs, two or more of the BOM being associated with a respective owner of a set of owners, and providing remote access to one or more elements of information in the database to one or more users, such that the database may contain BOMS having different owners, wherein each BOM data structure is for storing the parent-child relationships for at least one BOM of the plurality of BOMs, and wherein a BOM data structure includes, for a particular BOM, an entry for each element in the particular BOM, said element entry including a reference to the element'"'"'s entry in the list of elements, an entry indicating the owner, and an entry indicating any child of the element in the case the element has a child in the tree representing the particular BOM. - View Dependent Claims (33, 34)
-
-
35. A storage medium configured with code that when executed by one or more processors of a processing system cause carrying out of a method for managing a plurality of bills of material (BOMs), the method comprising:
-
storing the plurality of BOMs in a processing system, each BOM describable as a tree with each node an element, each element in each BOM associated with an owner of a set of owners, each BOM associated with an owner of the set of owners, including storing one or more data structures in the processing system to store the plurality of BOMs; and storing a list of elements in the processing system, each element in the list of elements having a unique element identifier, each element in each BOM being one of the elements in the list of elements, such that BOMS associated with different owners are stored in the same processing system, and such that the list of elements and the one or more data structures are part of a database stored in the same processing system. - View Dependent Claims (36, 37, 38, 39)
-
-
40. A storage medium configured with code that when executed by one or more processors of a processing system cause carrying out of a method, the method comprising:
-
storing a database in the processing system, the database including; a list of elements, each element having a unique identifier, one or more elements of the list of elements being for inclusion in one or more of a plurality of bills of material (BOMs); and one or more data structures for storing the plurality of BOMs, each BOM describable as a tree with each node an element of the list of elements, elements of at least two of the BOMs associated with respective owners of a set of owners, two or more of the BOMs being associated with respective owners of a set of owners, and providing remote access to one or more elements of information in the database to one or more users, such that the database may contain two BOMS associated with two different owners, wherein the method includes feature A and/or feature B, feature A including that at least one of the BOMs includes confidential information of the owner of the BOM such that that unrestricted access to the confidential information is limited to the owner and any one or more designates of the owner of the BOM, and that a first BOM of a first owner may share one or more elements of the list of elements with a second BOM of a second owner, and feature B including that one or more elements in the element list are associated with a respective owner of the set of owners, that the list of elements includes an indication of ownership for each element associated with one of the owners, and that the method further comprises restricting access to information about a particular element in the element list that is associated with a particular owner to the particular owner and any one or more designates of the particular owner. - View Dependent Claims (41, 42, 43)
-
-
44. A storage medium configured with code that when executed by one or more processors of a processing system cause carrying out of a method, the method comprising:
-
storing a database in the processing system, the database including; a list of elements, each element having a unique identifier, one or more of the elements being for inclusion in at least one bill of materials (BOM) of a plurality of bills of material (BOMs); and one or more BOM data structures for storing the plurality of BOMs, each BOM describable as a tree with each node an element of the list of elements and each branch of the tree defining a parent-child relationship, the one or more BOM data structures storing information on the parent-child relationships of the plurality of BOMs, two or more of the BOMs being associated with respective owners of a set of owners, and providing remote access to one or more elements of information in the database to one or more users, wherein the database further includes a list of owners in the set of owners, each owner having an entry including a unique owner identifier in the list of owners, such that the database may contain BOMS having different owners. - View Dependent Claims (45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64)
-
-
65. A storage medium, configured with code that when executed by one or more processors of a processing system cause carrying out of a method, the method comprising:
-
storing a database in the processing system, the database including; a list of elements, each element having a unique identifier, one or more of the elements being for inclusion in at least one bill of materials (BOM) of a plurality of bills of material (BOMs); and one or more BOM data structures for storing the plurality of BOMs, each BOM describable as a tree with each node an element of the list of elements and each branch of the tree defining a parent-child relationship, the one or more BOM data structures storing information on the parent-child relationships of the plurality of BOMs, two or more of the BOMs being associated with respective owners of a set of owners, and providing remote access to one or more elements of information in the database to one or more users, wherein the database includes confidential information of at least one of the owners such that that unrestricted access to the confidential information is limited to the owner and any one or more designates of the owner, wherein one or more elements in the element list is associated with a respective owner of the set of owners, wherein the list of elements includes an indication of ownership for each element associated with one of the owners, and wherein the confidential information of an owner that owns a element in the list of elements includes confidential information in the list of elements, such that the database may contain BOMS having different owners, and such that unrestricted access to confidential information about a particular element in the element list that is associated with a particular owner is limited to the particular owner and any one or more designates of the particular owner.
-
-
66. A storage medium, configured with code that when executed by one or more processors of a processing system cause carrying out of a method, the method comprising:
-
storing a database in the processing system, the database including; a list of elements, each element having a unique identifier, one or more of the elements being for inclusion in at least one bill of materials (BOM) of a plurality of bills of material (BOMs); and one or more BOM data structures for storing the plurality of BOMs, each BOM describable as a tree with each node an element of the list of elements and each branch of the tree defining a parent-child relationship, the one or more BOM data structures storing information on the parent-child relationships of the plurality of BOMs, two or more of the BOMs being associated with respective owners of a set of owners, and providing remote access to one or more elements of information in the database to one or more users, wherein the database includes confidential information of at least one of the owners such that that unrestricted access to the confidential information is limited to the owner and any one or more designates of the owner, wherein a first BOM of a first owner may share one or more elements of the list of elements with a second BOM of a second owner, such that the database may contain BOMS having different owners.
-
-
67. A storage medium, configured with code that when executed by one or more processors of a processing system cause carrying out of a method, the method comprising:
-
storing a database in the processing system, the database including; a list of elements, each element having a unique identifier, one or more of the elements being for inclusion in at least one bill of materials (BOM) of a plurality of bills of material (BOMs); and one or more BOM data structures for storing the plurality of BOMs, each BOM describable as a tree with each node an element of the list of elements and each branch of the tree defining a parent-child relationship, the one or more BOM data structures storing information on the parent-child relationships of the plurality of BOMs, two or more of the BOMs being associated with respective owners of a set of owners, and providing remote access to one or more elements of information in the database to one or more users, wherein a first BOM of a first owner may share one or more elements of the list of elements with a second BOM of a second owner, wherein an element in the element list is one of the set consisting of a physical element and a process, wherein the physical element may itself be a BOM, and wherein the process may reference a set of steps or operations, such that the database may contain BOMS having different owners.
-
-
68. A storage medium, configured with code that when executed by one or more processors of a processing system cause carrying out of a method, the method comprising:
-
storing a database in the processing system, the database including; a list of elements, each element having a unique identifier, one or more of the elements being for inclusion in at least one bill of materials (BOM) of a plurality of bills of material (BOMs); and one or more BOM data structures for storing the plurality of BOMs, each BOM describable as a tree with each node an element of the list of elements and each branch of the tree defining a parent-child relationship, the one or more BOM data structures storing information on the parent-child relationships of the plurality of BOMs, two or more of the BOMs being associated with respective owners of a set of owners, and providing remote access to one or more elements of information in the database to one or more users, wherein each BOM data structure is for storing the parent-child relationships for at least one BOM of the plurality of BOMs, and wherein a BOM data structure includes, for a particular BOM, an entry for each element in the particular BOM, said element entry including a reference to the element'"'"'s entry in the list of elements, an entry indicating the owner, and an entry indicating any child of the element in the case the element has a child in the tree representing the particular BOM, such that the database may contain BOMS having different owners. - View Dependent Claims (69, 70)
-
-
71. A system comprising:
-
means for storing a database in a processing system, the database including; a list of elements, each element having a unique identifier, one or more elements of the list of elements being for inclusion in one or more of a plurality of bills of material (BOMs); and one or more data structures for storing the plurality of BOMs, each BOM describable as a tree with each node an element of the list of elements, elements of at least two of the BOMs associated with respective owners of a set of owners, two or more of the BOMs being associated with respective owners of the set of owners, and means for providing remote access to one or more elements of information in the database to one or more users, such that the database may contain two BOMS associated with two or more different owners, the apparatus including feature A and/or feature B, feature A including that at least one of the BOMs includes confidential information of the owner of the BOM such that that unrestricted access to the confidential information is limited to the owner and any one or more designates of the owner of the BOM, and that a first BOM of a first owner may share one or more elements of the list of elements with a second BOM of a second owner, and feature B including that one or more elements in the element list are associated with a respective owner of the set of owners, that the list of elements includes an indication of ownership for each element associated with one of the owners, and that the system further comprises means for restricting access to information about a particular element in the element list that is associated with a particular owner to the particular owner and any one or more designates of the particular owner. - View Dependent Claims (72, 73, 74)
-
-
75. A system comprising:
-
means for storing a database in a processing system, the database including; a list of elements, each element having a unique identifier, one or more of the elements being for inclusion in at least one bill of materials (BOM) of a plurality of bills of material (BOMs); and one or more BOM data structures for storing the plurality of BOMs, each BOM describable as a tree with each node an element of the list of elements and each branch of the tree defining a parent-child relationship, the one or more BOM data structures storing information on the parent-child relationships of the plurality of BOMs, two or more of the BOMs being associated respective owners of a set of owners, and means for providing remote access to one or more elements of information in the database to one or more users, wherein the database further includes a list of owners in the set of owners, each owner having an entry including a unique owner identifier in the list of owners, such that the database may contain BOMS having different owners. - View Dependent Claims (76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100)
-
Specification