Business intelligence document

• US 9,069,557 B2
• Filed: 12/17/2010
• Issued: 06/30/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 12/17/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Mital, Vijay, Rubin, Darryl, Green, David George, Katzenberger, Gary Shon, Colle, Olivier, Poozhiyil, Suraj
• Primary Examiner(s): Dao, Thuy
• Assistant Examiner(s): Chowdhury, Ziaul A
• Application Number:
  US12/971,462
• Publication Number:
  US 20120159465A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,656 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/254 Extract, transform and load [ETL] procedures, e.g. ETL data flows in data warehouses
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/93 Document management systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/34 Graphical or visual programming
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4494 data driven

Abstract

A business intelligence (BI) document preserves references to identities and formats of remote data sources and allows a local computing device to offload analytical operations to remote data sources. The BI document specifies a graph of entities connected by directed edges from the output of one entity to an input of another entity. An entity, for example, can represent without limitation a data structure, an external data source, a control element, an external event source, a visualization, or an update service. The entities of a BI document at a local computing device can reference data at an original data source—rather than extracting data from the original data source to a preferred local datastore. An entity of the BI document can direct a remote data source to execute transformations on the remote data before returning a solution to the local computing device.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving into memory of a local computing system a description of a plurality of pipeline-connected entities defining a business intelligence application based on a business intelligence document, wherein the business intelligence application is defined and runs on the local computing system, the plurality of pipeline-connected entities include;

a first entity including one or more expressions and designating a remote data source, the first entity directing the remote data source to transform data of the remote data source using the one or more expressions in the first entity,

a second entity including one or more expressions and designating the local computing system, the second entity directing the local computing system to transform data of the local computing system using the one or more expressions of the second entity, and

a visualization entity including one or more expressions defining a user interface;

updating one or more connected entities in memory based on a remotely computed result of the first entity and a locally computed result of the second entity; and

presenting a combination of the remotely computed result of the first entity and the locally computed result of the second entity via the user interface defined by the visualization entity;

wherein the description of the plurality of connected entities forms a directed acyclic graph and independent parts of the business intelligence application are executed in parallel.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

communicating the one or more expressions of the first entity to the remote data source; and

receiving the remotely computed result of the first entity from the remote data source.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

evaluating the one or more expressions of the second entity against the designated local data to yield the locally computed result.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the one or more expressions of the first entity specify a symbolic representation of a computation to be performed on the designated data of the remote data source, wherein each expression are solvable by an expression engine of the remote data source.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the first entity defines an output communicating to an input of another entity of the description, wherein the data value at the output is the remotely computed result.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein an input of an entity is formatted to accept an output of another entity.

7. A computer-readable storage memory storing a data structure, the data structure comprising:

a set of pipeline-connected entities defining a business intelligence document, the business intelligence document being defined and used at a local computing device to define a business intelligence application that runs on the local computing device, the set including;

a first entity including one or more expressions and designating data of a remote data source, data of a local computing device, and a computation identifier for evaluation of the one or more expressions of the first entity, wherein the one or more expressions of the first entity are evaluated, based on the computation identifier, by transforming the data of the remote data source and data of the local computing device by the remote data source to yield a remotely computed result,

a second entity including one or more expressions and designating data of a local computing device against which the one or more expressions of the second entity are to be locally evaluated to yield a locally computed result, and

a visualization entity including one or more expressions defining a user interface, wherein the data of the local computing device and the remotely computed result are transformed to yield the locally computed result, at least one of the remotely computed result of the first entity and the locally computed result are presentable via the user interface defined by the visualization entity;

wherein the set of pipeline-connected entities forms a directed acyclic graph and wherein independent parts of the business intelligence application are executed in parallel.

8. The one or more computer-readable storage memory of claim 7, wherein the set of connected entities are updateable based on the remotely computed result of the first entity and the locally computed result of the second entity.

9. The one or more computer-readable storage memory of claim 7 wherein an expression engine at the local computing device determines, using the computation identifier, that the first entity designates the remote data source for computation of the one or more expressions of the first entity.

10. The one or more computer-readable storage memory of claim 7 wherein the one or more expressions of the first entity are capable of communication to the remote data source.

11. The one or more computer-readable storage memory of claim 7 wherein the one or more expressions of the first entity specify a symbolic representation of a computation to be performed on the designated data of the remote data source, wherein each expression is solvable by an expression engine of the remote data source.

12. The one or more computer-readable storage memory of claim 7 wherein the first entity defines an output communicating to an input of another entity of the description, wherein the data value at the output is the remotely computed result.

13. A computer-readable storage memory storing computer-executable instructions for executing on a computer system a computer process, the computer process comprising:

receiving into memory of a local computing device a description of a plurality of pipeline-connected entities defining a business intelligence application based on a business intelligence document, wherein the business intelligence application is defined and runs on the local computing device, and wherein the plurality of pipeline-connected entities include;

a first entity including one or more expressions, the one or more expressions of the first entity designating data of a remote data source and data of the local computing device against which the one or more expressions of the first entity are to be evaluated by the remote data source by transforming the data of the remote data source and data of the local computing device,

a second entity including one or more expressions and designating data of the local computing device against which the one or more expressions of the second entity are to be locally evaluated by transforming the data of the local computing device, and

a visualization entity including one or more expressions defining a user interface;

updating the one or more connected entities in memory based on a remotely computed result of the first entity and a locally computed result of the second entity; and

presenting at least one of the remotely computed result of the first entity and the locally computed result of the second entity via the user interface defined by the visualization entity;

wherein the description of the plurality of connected entities forms a directed acyclic graph, and wherein independent parts of the business intelligence application are executed in parallel.

14. The one or more computer-readable storage memory of claim 13 wherein the computer process further comprises:

communicating the one or more expressions of the first entity to the remote data source; and

receiving the remotely computed result of the first entity from the remote data source.

15. The one or more computer-readable storage memory of claim 13 wherein the computer process further comprises:

evaluating the one or more expressions of the second entity against the designated local data to yield the locally computed result.

16. The one or more computer-readable storage memory of claim 13 wherein the one or more expressions of the first entity specify a symbolic representation of a computation to be performed on the designated data of the remote data source, wherein each expression is solvable by an expression engine of the remote data source.

17. The one or more computer-readable storage memory of claim 13 wherein the first entity defines an output communicating to an input of another entity of the description, wherein the data value at the output is the remotely computed result.

18. The one or more computer-readable storage memory of claim 13 wherein an input of an entity is formatted to accept an output of another entity.