On-demand generation of correlated collections of mashable data from distributed, non-homogeneous data sources

• US 9,053,184 B2
• Filed: 04/14/2011
• Issued: 06/09/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 04/14/2011
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Gerard, Scott N., Gerken, John K. III
• Primary Examiner(s): Le, Miranda
• Application Number:
  US13/086,952
• Publication Number:
  US 20120265780A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,517 Days
• Field of Search: 707/769, 707/705, 707/758, 709/224
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking

Abstract

Embodiments of the present invention provide a method, system and computer program product for the on-demand generation of correlated collections of mashable data from distributed, heterogeneous data sources. In an embodiment of the invention, a method for on-demand generation of correlated collections of mashable data from distributed, heterogeneous data sources is provided. The method includes receiving a request for a data feed from a widget in a mashup rendered in a content browser executing in memory of a computer. The method further includes inspecting a virtual database of data aggregated from different data sources over a computer communications network to locate data requisite to returning the data feed to the widget in the mashup. The method yet further includes querying the data of the virtual database to produce the data feed. Finally, the method includes returning the data feed in the format specified to the widget in the mashup.

Claims

1. A method for on-demand generation of correlated collections of mashable data from distributed, heterogeneous data sources, the method comprising:

receiving an initial request for a data feed from a feed generator for a widget disposed in a mashup rendered within a Web browser;

retrieving data for the requested data feed from at least one of the data sources over a computer communications network and placing the retrieved data into a virtual database providing an application programming interface (API) exposing different querying services to different feed generators; and

upon receiving a subsequent request for a data feed of a different view of the data from a different feed generator for a different widget disposed in the mashup rendered within the Web browser, querying the virtual database to obtain the data to produce the requested data feed without retrieving the data from the data sources.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising formatting the data feed before returning the data feed to the widget in the mashup in a format consistent with a specified markup language.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

caching the data feed in a cache; and

,

satisfying subsequent requests for the data feed from the cache and not the virtual database.

4. A content aggregation data processing system configured for on-demand generation of correlated collections of mashable data from distributed, heterogeneous data sources, the system comprising:

a host server with at least one processor and memory and configured for communicative coupling to a plurality of data sources and also a plurality of different computers over a computer communications network, each of the computers comprising a content browser rendering a mashup of widgets, the host server being configured to;

receive an initial request for a data feed from a feed generator for a widget disposed in a mashup rendered within a Web browser;

retrieve data for the requested data feed from at least one of the data sources over the computer communications network and place the retrieved data into a virtual database disposed in the memory of the host server, the virtual database providing an application programming interface (API) exposing different querying services to different feed generators; and

upon receiving a subsequent request for a data feed of a different view of the data from a different feed generator for a different widget disposed in the mashup rendered within the Web browser, query the virtual database to obtain the data to produce the requested data feed without retrieving the data from the data sources.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the data feed is provided to the widget for the mashup by way of a representational state transfer (REST) service.

6. The system of claim 4, wherein the data feed is provided to the widget in the mashup by way of a really simple syndication (RSS) feed.

7. The system of claim 4, further comprising a cache into which the data feed is stored for subsequent retrieval in response to a similar data feed request.

8. A computer program product for on-demand generation of correlated collections of mashable data from distributed, heterogeneous data sources, the computer program product comprising:

a computer readable storage medium having computer readable program code embodied therewith, the computer readable program code comprising;

computer readable program code for receiving an initial request for a data feed from a feed generator for a widget disposed in a mashup rendered within a Web browser;

computer readable program code for retrieving data for the requested data feed from at least one of the data sources over a computer communications network and placing the retrieved data into a virtual database providing an application programming interface (API) exposing different querying services to different feed generators; and

computer readable program code for upon receiving a subsequent request for a data feed of a different view of the data from a different feed generator for a different widget disposed in the mashup rendered within the Web browser, querying the virtual database to obtain the data to produce the requested data feed without retrieving the data from the data sources.

9. The computer program product of claim 8, further comprising computer readable program code for formatting the data feed before returning the data feed to the widget in the mashup in a format consistent with a specified markup language.

10. The computer program product of claim 8, further comprising:

computer readable program code for caching the data feed in a cache; and

, computer readable program code for satisfying subsequent requests for the data feed from the cache and not the virtual database.