Method and apparatus for scalable transport processing fulfillment system

• US 7,949,686 B2
• Filed: 10/04/2010
• Issued: 05/24/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 04/23/2004
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Walmart Apollo, LLC (WalMart Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Wal Mart Stores Inc (WalMart Inc.)
• Inventors: Harward, Nathaniel D., Hui, Simon Wing-Lok, Groza, Yulia, Chen, Steven S., Chang, Alvin Kai-Hau
• Primary Examiner(s): Lu; Kuen S
• Application Number:
  US12/896,990
• Publication Number:
  US 20110022672A1
• Time in Patent Office: 232 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 707/802
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/08 Logistics, e.g. warehousing, loading or distribution; Inventory or stock management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/087 Inventory or stock management, e.g. order filling, procurement or balancing against orders
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management

Abstract

A scalable fulfillment system is presented that supports business processes, manages the transport and processing of business-related messages or documents between a business entity and clients, such as customers, vendors, and business partners, and generally supports business document processing. The system intelligently manages the transportation of files from clients, through processing of files, to generating responses that return to the clients. To accommodate a heterogeneous interfacing and processing with different clients in a central system, a file normalization technique is used that captures a common meta-data format from the numerous heterogeneous file types used by numerous clients. The meta-data files, also referred to as messages, contain links to their associated data files and are processed separately. Once the messages are entered into the system, an intelligent queue scheduler (IQS) is used to schedule the processing of messages across a scalable resource of processing engines based on normalized file meta-data parameters.

Claims

1. A method for scalable processing of client messages in a fulfillment system, the method comprising:

storing a set of action tasks in an action task table according to predefined types of client files, the action task table specifying links to the action tasks and a processing sequence;

enqueueing a client message on a work scheduling queue, the client message containing a first set of meta-data and a second set of meta-data concerning a client file, the client file accessible on a backing store;

dequeueing a client message according to a priority based upon the first set of meta-data information;

selecting an action task from the action task table based on the second set of meta-data information and the processing sequence; and

processing the dequeued client message according to the selected action task on an available process from a group of parallel processes, whereby the processing of the file stored in the backing store is separated from the message processing flow.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein processing the dequeued client message further comprises:

updating the meta-data contained in the client message for a new message type and a timestamp; and

enqueueing the updated client message on the work scheduling queue.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the action tasks are each uniquely specified by a client source name, type of file, and direction of file processing.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the first set of meta-data information comprises at least a timestamp.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein processing the dequeued message proceeds until the processing is successfully completed or fails and an indication is provided as to the success or failure of the processing so that if the processing is unsuccessful then an ordered procedure is followed to deal with the failure and provide information as to the extent that processing was successful.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the second set of meta-data information comprises:

a client source name;

a flag;

a type of file; and

an indication of direction of file processing as either incoming or outgoing.

7. A scalable processing system for processing client files in an fulfillment system, the scalable processing system comprising:

an intelligent queue scheduler for scheduling client messages enqueued on a work scheduling queue for processing where a client message comprises a first set of meta-data having a link to an associated client file separately stored in a backing store and a second set of meta-data having a client source name, file type, an indication of message direction as either incoming or outgoing, a link to a set of action tasks, and a flag;

a scalable pool of processor resources providing a list of message types each associated with a selectable processor resource to the intelligent queue scheduler;

individually selectable processor resources selected from the scalable pool of processor resources based on the message type for processing a first set of client messages in sequential order based on the flag indicating serial processing; and

individually selectable processor resources selected from the scalable pool of processor resources based on the message type for simultaneously processing a second set of client messages in parallel based on the flag indicating parallel processing.

8. The scalable processing system of claim 7 further comprising:

an action task table containing a link to at least a first action task and a link to a second action task both action tasks being required for the processing of a client message, each task identified according to predefined types of client files; and

an available processor resource selected from the scalable pool of processor resources for processing the first action task first the said processing comprising updating the meta-data contained in the client message for a new message type and a time stamp; and

the available processor resource enqueueing the update client message on the work scheduling queue.

9. The scalable processing system of claim 8 wherein the processing of the second action task completes the processing for the client message and provides an indication of success or failure of said processing.