Method for providing a real time view of heterogeneous enterprise data

• US 9,177,275 B2
• Filed: 08/08/2013
• Issued: 11/03/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 05/27/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Nesamoney, Diaz H., Yan, Weipeng Paul, Martin, Jameison Bear, Radalj, Maurice Mate, Younas, Fayyaz Ahmad
• Primary Examiner(s): Sough, H S
• Assistant Examiner(s): JORDAN, KIMBERLY L
• Application Number:
  US13/962,859
• Publication Number:
  US 20140039952A1
• Time in Patent Office: 817 Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2458 Special types of queries, e.g. statistical queries, fuzzy queries or distributed queries
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/283 Multi-dimensional databases or data warehouses, e.g. MOLAP or ROLAP
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/063 Operations research, analysis or management
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99938 Concurrency, e.g. lock management in shared database

Abstract

A method for providing a real time view of heterogeneous enterprise data of operational systems includes capturing streams of operational events in real time, combining the events with contextual data, and materializing a resulting view. The resulting view includes a dynamically defined view of the stream of events and provides visibility into a current state of the operational system. A view snapshot is continuously incrementally updated by a view maintenance engine as a stream of rows. The views are used to evaluate a business rule. An alert is fired when a business rule holds true. To enable the view in a view engine, a SQL string characterizing the view is parsed into a parse tree, which is normalized to form a query graph. The query graph is then optimized to obtain a query plan, which is compiled into an operator graph. Queries are executed based upon the operator graph.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

generating a dynamically defined view of a stream of operational events captured in real time, wherein the dynamically defined view provides visibility into a current state of the operational systems;

generating a hidden rule view, based on the dynamically defined view and a hidden rule, wherein the hidden rule is selected from the group consisting essentially of Fire, Raise, and Lower, wherein the hidden rule view is not output for display and is usable to evaluate the hidden rule;

generating for display, based on the hidden rule view and context data associated with an event of the stream of events, a business view that is usable to define a set of business rules; and

responsive to determining that one of the set of defined business rules holds true, generating for display, a reportlet corresponding to an alert that is based at least in part on the one of the set of defined business rules.

2. The method as recited in claim 1 further comprising:

generating a hidden reportlet view from the business view; and

asynchronously sending the reportlet view to a reportlet engine.

3. The method as recited in claim 1 further comprising:

formulating a reportlet query from the business view; and

synchronously sending said reportlet query to a reportlet engine.

4. The method as recited in claim 1 wherein a user defines the one of the set of defined business rules from the business view online and wherein the rule engine defines the hidden view for evaluating the hidden rule.

5. The method as recited in claim 1 wherein, for the business view in the form of when a specified Boolean expression occurs, fire the alert, the Boolean expression is evaluated for each row of a plurality of rows comprising said business view and the alert is fired once for each row of said plurality of rows wherein the Boolean expression evaluates to true.

6. The method as recited in claim 4 wherein, for the business view in the form of when a specified Boolean expression occurs, fire a consolidated alert wherein the hidden view comprises a table containing one row, the Boolean expression is evaluated for each row of a plurality of rows comprising the business view and the consolidated alert is fired once where said Boolean expression evaluates to true for any row comprising said plurality of rows.

7. The method as recited in claim 4 wherein, for the one of the set of defined business rules in the form of when a specified Boolean expression occurs raise the alert, the Boolean expression is evaluated for each row of a plurality of rows comprising the business view and the alert is raised by a fixed amount.

8. The method as recited in claim 4 wherein, for a rule on the business view in the form of when a specified Boolean expression occurs, lower the alert, the Boolean expression is evaluated for each row of a plurality of rows comprising the business view and the alert is lowered by a fixed amount.

9. The method as recited in claim 4 wherein, for a rule on the business view in the form of when a specified Boolean expression holds for a specified duration, raise the alert, wherein the hidden view comprises a current time stamp function, the current time stamp function returning a timestamp corresponding to the current time, the Boolean expression is evaluated for each row of a plurality of rows comprising the business view and the alert is raised by a fixed amount when the Boolean expression persists for the specified duration.

10. The method as recited in claim 4 wherein, for a rule on the business view in the form of when a specified Boolean expression holds for a specified duration, lower the alert, wherein the hidden view comprises a current time stamp function, the current time stamp function returning a timestamp corresponding to the current time, said Boolean expression is evaluated for each row of a plurality of rows comprising the business view and the alert is lowered by a fixed amount when the Boolean expression persists for the specified duration.

11. The method as recited in claim 4 wherein, for a rule on the business view in the form of when a specified Boolean expression holds for a specified duration, raise an alert, for a specific column of a column list, wherein the hidden view comprises a current time stamp function, the current time stamp function returning a timestamp corresponding to the current time, said Boolean expression is evaluated for each row of a plurality of rows comprising the business view and the alert is raised by a fixed amount when said Boolean expression persists for the specified duration for the specific column.

12. The method as recited in claim 4 wherein, for a rule on the business view in the form of when a specified Boolean expression holds for a specified duration, lower the alert, for a specific column of a column list, wherein the hidden view comprises a current time stamp function, the current time stamp function returning a timestamp corresponding to the current time, the Boolean expression is evaluated for each row of a plurality of rows comprising the business view and the alert is lowered by a fixed amount when the Boolean expression persists for the specified duration for the specific column.

14. The non-transitory computer usable medium of claim 11 having computer readable program code embodied therein that causes the computer system to:

generate a hidden reportlet view from the business view; and

asynchronously send the reportlet view to a reportlet engine.

15. The non-transitory computer usable medium of claim 11 having computer readable program code embodied therein that causes the computer system to:

formulate a reportlet query from the business view; and

synchronously send said reportlet query to a reportlet engine.

13. A non-transitory computer usable medium having computer readable program code embodied therein that causes a computer system to:

generate a dynamically defined view of a stream of operational events captured in real time, wherein the dynamically defined view provides visibility into a current state of the operational systems;

generate a hidden rule view, based on the dynamically defined view and a hidden rule, wherein the hidden rule is selected from the group consisting essentially of Fire, Raise, and Lower, wherein the hidden rule view is not output for display and is usable to evaluate the hidden rule;

generate for display, based on the hidden rule view and context data associated with an event of the stream of events, a business view that is usable to define a set of business rules; and

responsive to determining that one of the set of defined business rules holds true, generate for display, a reportlet corresponding to an alert that is based at least in part on the one of the set of defined business rules.

16. A computer system comprising:

at least one processor; and

a memory comprising a plurality of instructions that when executed by the at least one processor cause the at least one processor to;

generate a dynamically defined view of a stream of operational events captured in real time, wherein the dynamically defined view provides visibility into a current state of the operational systems;

generate a hidden rule view, based on the dynamically defined view and a hidden rule, wherein the hidden rule is selected from the group consisting essentially of Fire, Raise, and Lower, wherein the hidden rule view is not output for display and is usable to evaluate the hidden rule;

generate for display, based on the hidden rule view and context data associated with an event of the stream of events, a business view that is usable to define a set of business rules; and

responsive to determining that one of the set of defined business rules holds true, generate for display, a reportlet corresponding to an alert that is based at least in part on the one of the set of defined business rules.

17. The computer system of claim 16, wherein the memory comprises further instructions that when executed by the processor cause the processor to:

generate a hidden reportlet view from the business view; and

asynchronously send the reportlet view to a reportlet engine.

18. The computer system of claim 16, wherein the memory comprises further instructions that when executed by the processor cause the processor to:

formulate a reportlet query from the subsequent business view; and

synchronously send the reportlet query to a reportlet engine.