Deployment and release component system

• US 8,595,103 B1
• Filed: 09/30/2010
• Issued: 11/26/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 09/30/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Accenture Global Services Limited (Accenture PLC)
• Original Assignee: Accenture Global Services Limited (Accenture PLC)
• Inventors: Wargin, Jeffrey M., Chen, Andy I-Hong, Brandt, Richard Carl
• Primary Examiner(s): Ebersman, Bruce I
• Assistant Examiner(s): ANDERSON, JOHN A
• Application Number:
  US12/895,250
• Time in Patent Office: 1,153 Days
• Field of Search: 705/35
• US Class Current: 705/35
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/08 Insurance

Abstract

A system and operations include software, servers, templates, databases, and user interfaces for initializing and deploying insurance products and offerings into test runtime environments, modeling runtime environments, and commercial product runtime environments. The system may process an insurance product offering having insurance product components based on a package manifest. The package manifest may be generated prior to deployment based on arrangement of the insurance product components in an insurance product framework of the insurance product offering and third part engine servers executable in conjunction with the insurance product components. As a prerequisite to generation of the package manifest, the system may perform a coherency check of the insurance product offering to confirm compliance with a set of coherency check rules.

Claims

1. A method for creating a lifecycle based insurance product comprising:

retrieving an insurance product offering stored in an insurance product development database with a server computer, wherein the insurance product offering includes one or more business services and insurance product components arranged in an insurance product framework, the insurance product framework including identification of business services supported by the insurance product offering, and each of the insurance product components including a rule type, the rule type associated with a callable executable associated with a corresponding third party engine server;

invoking a pre-deployment coherency check request with the server computer for the insurance product offering;

performing a pre-deployment coherency check of the insurance product offering with the server computer in response to receipt of the pre-deployment coherency check request for the insurance product offering, the pre-deployment coherency check including;

determining whether the insurance product offering conforms to a predetermined set of coherency rules comprising;

selecting a business service specified by the insurance product offering;

confirming, with the server computer, that rule type identifier associated with the business service specifies the rule type of at least one of the insurance product components;

determining a release type attribute for the insurance product package manifest with the server computer based upon a release type associated with the insurance product offering;

performing a standard release coherency check with the server computer in response to the server computer determining that the release type attribute is set to a standard release;

performing a model execution release coherency check with the server computer in response to the server computer determining that the release type attribute is set to a model execution release, the model execution release coherency check comprising;

the server computer excluding an operative insurance product component of the insurance product components from the model execution coherency check based upon the model execution coherency attribute being set to exclude; and

the server computer including the operative insurance product component in the model execution coherency check based upon the model execution coherency attributed being set to include; and

generating with the server computer an insurance product package manifest in response to the server computer determining that the insurance product offering conforms to the predetermined set of coherency rules, the insurance product package manifest generated to include a list of the insurance product components and executable code to enable execution of the insurance product offering, the generation comprising;

saving information of the at least one of the insurance product components in the product package manifest; and

associating the callable executable with the at least one of the insurance product components.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein a respective insurance product component of the insurance product components includes one or more attributes;

and

wherein determining whether the insurance product offering conforms to a predetermined set of coherency rules comprises;

determining, with the server computer, which of the one or more attributes of the respective insurance product component are required based upon an association of the respective insurance product component to an other of the insurance product components;

determining, with the server computer, whether a required attribute of the respective insurance product component is unspecified; and

generating a coherency error with the server computer in response to the server computer determining that the required attribute is unspecified.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein performing the pre-deployment coherency check of the insurance product offering comprises:

the server computer identifying a missing rule type associated with the rule type identifier, and providing the missing rule type in a coherency error report in response to the server computer determining that the rule type identifier fails to identify any rule type of the at least one of the insurance product components.

4. The method of claim 1,

wherein performing the pre-deployment coherency check on the insurance product offering comprises:

the server computer determining whether a respective insurance product component of the insurance product components is unrelated to all of the one or more business services; and

generating a component error notification with the server computer in response to server computer determining that the respective insurance product component is unrelated to all of the one or more business services.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining, with the server computer, whether the insurance product offering includes multiple versions of at least one of the insurance product components;

and generating a coherency error with the server computer based upon the server computer determining that the insurance product offering includes multiple versions of at least one of the insurance product components.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein an operative insurance product component of the insurance product components is associated with a coherency indicator attribute;

and wherein performing the standard release coherency check further comprises;

the server computer excluding the operative insurance product component from the standard release coherency check based upon the coherency indicator attribute being set to exclude the operative insurance product component from the standard coherency check; and

the server computer including the operative insurance product component in the standard release coherency check based upon the coherency indicator attribute being set to include the operative insurance product component in the standard release coherency check.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein an operative insurance component of the insurance product components is associated with an include indicator attribute;

and wherein generating an insurance product manifest comprises;

the server computer excluding the operative insurance product component from the insurance product package manifest based upon the include indicator attribute being set to exclude the operative insurance product component from the insurance product package manifest; and

the server computer including the operative insurance product component in the insurance product package manifest based upon the include indicator attribute being set to include the operative insurance product component from the insurance product package manifest.

8. A system for managing generation of a deployable runtime component comprising:

a configurable engine server;

a memory including a staging area memory;

a processor in communication with the memory and the configurable engine server, the processor configured to receive a create manifest request for an insurance product offering, wherein the create manifest request includes a list of insurance product components and insurance product component meta data comprising information describing a structure of the insurance product offering;

the processor further configured to obtain engine mapping information for each of the insurance product components, the mapping information identifying third party engine servers for use with respective insurance product components;

the processor further configured to send a configuration information request to the configurable engine server based upon the engine mapping information, wherein the configuration information request directs the configurable engine server to create deployable executables comprising a set of compiled rules and rates the third party engine servers for use with the insurance product offering the configurable engine server further configured to store the deployable executables in the staging area memory and return identifiers of the deployable executables to the processor; and

the processor is further configured to merge the received identifiers of the deployable executables with the insurance product component meta data and generate an insurance product package manifest in the staging area memory, the insurance product package manifest generated to include the list of the insurance product components associated with the identifiers of the deployable executables to enable execution of the insurance product offering using the third party engine servers,

wherein the insurance product components include more than one version of an operable insurance product component of the insurance product components, and the processor is further configured to determine whether a release type attribute associated with the insurance product offering is set to model execution job; and

the processor further configured to determine a version of the operable insurance product component to include in the insurance product package manifest in response to a determination that the release type attribute is set to model execution job, the version of the operable insurance product component determined based upon an include indicator attribute associated with each version of the operable insurance product component.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the processor is further configured to identify the configurable engine server corresponding to the respective insurance product component of the insurance product components based upon a rule type associated with the respective insurance product component.

10. The system of claim 8, wherein the processor is further configured to identify a list of one or more business services and one or more business map components to be included in the insurance product package manifest based upon the insurance product component meta data contained in the create manifest request;

and

the processor is further configured to identify a superfluous insurance product component included within the insurance product components based upon the list of the one or more business services and the one or more business map components.

11. The system of claim 8, wherein the system further comprises a database, and the insurance product offering is associated with package configuration tables that are related within the database, the processor further configured to analyze the package configuration tables to identify a business service to be deployed, wherein the business service is associated with one or more engine services of the configurable engine server.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the package configuration tables include a business service table, and the processor is further configured to analyze the business service table to identify the business service to be deployed;

and

the processor is further configured to determine an organization of the insurance product components and the insurance product structure in the insurance product package manifest based upon the identified business service to be deployed.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the package configuration tables further include a service table related to the business service table, and a business map component table related to the service table, and wherein the service table is further related in a one-to-many relationship to one or more business map component tables.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the configurable engine server computer is associated with an engine object;

and the service table includes a rule type code identifier that corresponds to the engine object of the configurable engine server, and wherein the processor is further configured to determine whether the rule type code identifier is associated with a rule type of one or more of the insurance product components.

15. The system of claim 8, wherein the insurance product component meta data describes an insurance product structure of the insurance product offering that interrelates the insurance product components.

16. The system of claim 8, wherein a first operative insurance product component of the insurance product components is associated with a first include identifier indicator attribute, and a second operative insurance product component of the insurance product components is associated with a second include identifier indicator attribute;

and

the processor is further configured to determine whether to include one of the first operative insurance product component and the second operative insurance product component in the insurance product package manifest based upon the first include identifier indicator attribute and the second include identifier indicator attribute.

17. The system of claim 8, wherein the insurance product offering includes a business service, and the insurance product offering is associated with a profile table, wherein the profile table includes a rule type identifier for a rule type of an operative insurance product component of the insurance product components;

and

the processor is further configured to iterate through the list of insurance product components to determine whether the rule type identifier of the operative insurance product component corresponds to a rule type identifier associated with the business service.

18. The system of claim 8, wherein the package engine objects includes at least one of compiled rules and compiled rates for the identified configurable engine server.

19. A tangible computer storage medium comprising:

computer program instructions stored on the tangible computer storage medium, the computer program instructions selectively executed by a processor, the computer program instructions including;

instructions to receive a create manifest request including a list of insurance product components and meta data for an insurance product offering, the meta data comprising information describing a structure of the insurance product offering, and each of the insurance product components including a rule type, the rule type associated with a callable executable associated with a corresponding third party engine server;

instructions to determine whether the create manifest request is for a model execution job or a standard release, the model execution being for simulation and further development that uses at least one first business service, and the standard release being a commercial release of the insurance product offering that uses at least one second business service;

instructions to perform a model execution coherency check using the at least one first business service based upon the create manifest request being for the model execution job, the coherency check comprising confirmation that a first rule type code identifier included in the first business service matches at least one of the insurance product components;

instructions to perform a standard release coherency check using the at least one second business service based upon the create manifest request being for the standard release, the coherency check comprising confirmation that a second rule type code identifier included in the second business service matches at least one of the insurance product components; and

instructions to generate an insurance product package manifest following successful performance of one of the model execution coherency check and the standard coherency check, the insurance product package manifest generated to include the list of the insurance product components associated with the callable executables to enable execution of the insurance product offering using the insurance product components and associated corresponding third party engine servers.

20. The tangible computer storage medium of claim 19, wherein an operable insurance product component of the insurance product components is associated with a coherency indicator attribute, the coherency indicator attribute set to exclude;

and

the instructions to perform the standard release coherency check comprises instructions to exclude the operable insurance product component from the standard release coherency check based upon the coherency indicator attribute associated with the operable insurance product component.

21. The tangible computer storage medium of claim 19, wherein an operable insurance product component of the insurance product components is associated with a model execution coherency indicator attribute, the model execution coherency indicator attribute set to exclude;

and

wherein the instruction to perform the model execution coherency check comprises an instruction to exclude the operable insurance product component from the model execution coherency check based upon the model execution coherency indicator attribute being set to exclude.

22. The tangible computer storage medium of claim 19, wherein the insurance product offering is associated with package configuration tables including a profile table having the rule type associated with an operable insurance product component of the insurance product components and a business service table;

and the tangible computer storage medium further comprises;

instructions to determine whether the operable insurance product component is tied to a business service specified in the business service table based upon the rule type associated with the operable insurance product component; and

instructions to return a coherency error in response to determination that the operable insurance product component is not tied to the business service specified in the business service table.

23. The tangible computer storage medium of claim 19, further comprising:

instructions to determine whether a required attribute for an operable insurance product component of the insurance product components is specified; and

instructions to generate an invalid attribute error in response to determination that the required attribute of the operable insurance product component is at least one of invalid or unspecified.

24. The tangible computer storage medium of claim 19, further comprising:

instructions to determine whether the create manifest request is for a standard release;

instructions to determine if more than one version of any one of the insurance product components is contained in the list of insurance product components in response to the create manifest request being for the standard release;

instructions to generate a coherency error based upon determination that the list of insurance product components contains more than one version of any one of the insurance product components.

25. The tangible computer storage medium of claim 19, wherein the list of insurance product components includes multiple versions of an operable insurance product component included within the insurance product components, the tangible computer storage medium further comprising:

instructions to execute a model execution job;

instructions to determine whether the model execution job restricts use of multiple versions of the insurance product components; and

instructions to generate a coherency error based upon the determination that the model execution job restricts use of multiple versions of the insurance product components.

26. The tangible computer storage medium of claim 19, wherein the insurance product offering includes an insurance product framework including a plurality of nodes and a plurality of branches, wherein an operable insurance product component included within the insurance product components is attached to an operative node of the nodes through an operative branch of the branches, the tangible computer storage medium further comprising:

an instruction to generate a coherency error report in response to a coherency error associated with the operable insurance product component, the coherency error report including a coherency error link to the operable insurance product component and indication of the operable branch and the operable node within the insurance product framework to which the operable insurance product is attached.

27. The tangible computer storage medium of claim 26, further comprising:

instructions to receive a selection of the coherency error link; and

instructions to generate a suggested corrective action based upon the selected coherency error link.