Dynamically joined fast search views for business objects

• US 9,053,151 B2
• Filed: 07/30/2010
• Issued: 06/09/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 07/30/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: SAP SE
• Original Assignee: SAP SE
• Inventors: Vossen, Oliver, Mller, Martin, Wintel, Maic
• Primary Examiner(s): Alam, Hosain
• Assistant Examiner(s): HARPER, ELIYAH STONE
• Application Number:
  US12/847,295
• Publication Number:
  US 20120030189A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,775 Days
• Field of Search: 707/787, 707/687, 707/705
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2445 Data retrieval commands; View definitions
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2456 Join operations
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24561 Intermediate data storage techniques for performance improvement

Abstract

According to some embodiments, an anchor transactional view may be defined for at least one business object data structure. The anchor transactional may have a plurality of anchor fields, each anchor field representing a data source and being associated with a field of an anchor search view. An indication of at least one extension field to the anchor search view may be received. The anchor search view and at least one extension field may represent, for example, a virtual fast search infrastructure view. Responsive to the received indication of the at least one extension field, an additional view may be dynamically joined at runtime to the anchor transactional view. The additional view may have at least one additional field, and each additional field may be associated with one of the extension fields.

Claims

1. A computer implemented method, comprising:

defining an anchor transactional view for at least one business object data structure, the anchor transactional view being a standard pre-defined search view of stored data within physical tables of a database, the anchor transactional view having a plurality of anchor fields, each anchor field representing a data source, each anchor field being associated with a field of an anchor search view representing underlying business object nodes of a data source connected by database join functions;

receiving a search request from a client, the search request including an indication of including an additional at least one extension field to the anchor search view, the anchor search view and at least one extension field representing a virtual fast search infrastructure view of the stored data within the physical tables of the database; and

responsive to the received indication of the at least one extension field, adding an additional view of a data structure to the anchor transaction view by dynamically executing a database join at runtime, the additional view having at least one additional field, wherein each additional field is associated with one of the extension fields.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the additional view comprises a master data view.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein a plurality of master data views are dynamically joined at runtime to the anchor transactional view.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

passing a list of views and respective join conditions to a view execution interface at runtime.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

directly calculating join paths for all of the extension fields at run time.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising:

determining via a caching mechanism whether or not the join paths have already been calculated and stored into a buffer such that multiple calls to the same dynamically joined view will not result in re-calculation of join paths.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

dynamically creating an in-memory logical index on a search engine at runtime in response to an initialization call;

creating a result data structure; and

passing the result data structure as a data reference.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

including the result data structure in a call to a dynamic join execution, wherein the call further includes at least one of;

(i) a selection condition, (ii) sorting criteria, or (iii) constrain parameters.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

generating a report based at least in part on information in the result data structure.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

for each of the extension fields, dynamically defining, at run time, an alias to reference the extension field.

11. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing program code executable by a computer to:

define an anchor transactional view for at least one business object data structure, the anchor transactional view being a standard pre-defined search view of stored data within physical tables of a database, the anchor transactional view having a plurality of anchor fields, each anchor field representing a data source, each anchor field being associated with a field of an anchor search view representing underlying business object nodes of a data source connected by database join functions;

receive a search request from a client, the search request including an indication of including an additional at least one extension field to the anchor search view, the anchor search view and at least one extension field representing a virtual fast search infrastructure view of the stored data within the physical tables of the database; and

responsive to the received indication of the at least one extension field, adding an additional view of a data structure to the anchor transaction view by dynamically executing a database join at runtime, the additional view having at least one additional field, wherein each additional field is associated with one of the extension fields.

12. The medium of claim 11, wherein the additional view comprises a master data view.

13. The medium of claim 11, wherein a plurality of master data views are dynamically joined at runtime to the anchor transactional view.

14. The medium of claim 11, further comprising:

passing a list of views and respective join conditions to a view execution interface at runtime.

15. A system associated with an anchor transactional view for at least one business object data structure, the anchor transactional view being a standard pre-defined search view of stored data within physical tables of a database, the anchor transactional view having a plurality of anchor fields, each anchor field representing a data source, each anchor field being associated with a field of an anchor search view representing underlying business object nodes of a data source connected by database join functions, comprising:

an enterprise service infrastructure;

a fast search infrastructure in communication with the enterprise service infrastructure, wherein the fast search infrastructure is configured to;

receive a search request from a client, the search request including an indication of including an additional at least one extension field to the anchor search view, the anchor search view and at least one extension field representing a virtual fast search infrastructure view, and

dynamically execute a database join at runtime to add an additional view of a data structure to the anchor transactional view, the additional view having at least one additional field, wherein each additional field is associated with one of the extension fields; and

a search engine in communication with the fast search infrastructure and configured to execute a search in accordance with the dynamically joined views and to output a search result of the stored data within the physical tables of the database.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the additional view comprises a master data view.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein a plurality of master data views are dynamically joined at runtime to the anchor transactional view.

18. The system of claim 15, wherein join paths for all of the extension fields are dynamically calculated at run time.

19. The system of claim 18, further comprising:

a caching mechanism to determine whether or not the join paths have already been calculated and stored into a buffer such that multiple calls to the same dynamically joined view will not result in re-calculation of join paths.

20. The system of claim 15, wherein an in-memory logical index is dynamically created on said search engine at runtime in response to an initialization call.

21. The system of claim 15, wherein an alias is dynamically defined for each of the extension fields at run time to reference the extension field.