Discovery, Analysis, and Visualization of Dependencies

• US 20110055811A1
• Filed: 09/02/2009
• Published: 03/03/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 09/02/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Ananthanarayanan, Rema, Krishnapuram, Raghuram, Chaturvedi, Vinatha, Deshpande, Prasad M., Mohammed, Shajeer K., Chenthamarakshan, Vijil E.
• Granted Patent: US 8,713,521 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/120
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/71 Version control security arrangements therefor G06F21/57; Configuration management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/44536 Selecting among different versions
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling

Abstract

Product data pertaining to a plurality of products is gathered from a plurality of sources. Dependency information for the plurality of products is extracted from the product data. The dependency information is analyzed to determine dependencies for each product of the plurality of products. The dependencies for each product of the plurality of products are displayed to a user.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

gathering, from a plurality of sources, product data pertaining to a plurality of products;

extracting, from the product data, dependency information for the plurality of products;

analyzing the dependency information to determine dependencies for each product of the plurality of products; and

displaying the dependencies for each product of the plurality of products to a user.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein, in the gathering step, the product data pertains to consumer products.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein, in the gathering step, the product data pertains to computer products.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the gathering step comprises employing a web crawler to gather the product data from at least one of:

world wide web product home pages;

intranet product home pages;

product documents on the world wide web;

intranet product documents;

support pages on the world wide web;

intranet support pages;

structured databases on the world wide web; and

intranet structured databases.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the extracting step comprises applying text analytics to the product data.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising converting the product data to extensible markup language and storing the converted product data as crawled data, wherein the step of applying the text analytics comprises annotating the crawled data to obtain mined data, and wherein the analyzing step is carried out on the mined data.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein said extracting step includes identifying synonyms of a given one of the products.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

performing an impact analysis on the dependency information to determine an impact of at least one dependency change; and

displaying the impact to the user.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein at least some of the products have multiple features, and wherein the impact analysis comprises determining how at least some of the features are impacted by the at least one dependency change.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein, in the gathering step, the product data pertains to computer software products, further comprising optimizing cost for porting the computer software products from a first system to a second system.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein, in the gathering step, the product data pertains to computer software products, further comprising optimizing cost for architecting a new solution with at least some of the computer software products.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein, in the analyzing step, the dependencies comprise at least AND dependencies and OR dependencies.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein at least some of the OR dependencies comprise dependencies on multiple substitutable versions of a single product, and wherein the displaying step comprises grouping the multiple versions together for display.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein, in the gathering step, the product data pertains to computer software products, further comprising optimizing speed to market for architecting a new solution with at least some of the computer software products.

15. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

filtering the dependencies based on at least one attribute of at least one product of the plurality of products; and

in case a given dependency cannot be satisfied due to the filtering, marking the dependency that cannot be satisfied during the displaying step.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein, in the displaying step, display of at least some of the dependencies is limited to a specified depth.

17. The method of claim 1, wherein at least a first one of the products propagates at least one feature to at least one other one of the products, which is a child of the first one of the products, and wherein the propagation of the feature is displayed in the displaying step.

18. The method of claim 1, further comprising providing a system, wherein the system comprises distinct software modules, each of the distinct software modules being embodied on a computer-readable storage medium, and wherein the distinct software modules comprise a front-end module, a text analytics module, and a data gathering module;

wherein;

the gathering of the product data is carried out by the data gathering module executing on at least one hardware processor;

the extracting of the dependency information is carried out by the text analytics module executing on the at least one hardware processor;

the analyzing of the dependency information is carried out by the text analytics module and the front end module executing on the at least one hardware processor; and

the displaying the dependencies is carried out by the front end module executing on the at least one hardware processor.

19. A computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having computer readable program code embodied therewith, said computer readable program code comprising:

computer readable program code configured to gather, from a plurality of sources, product data pertaining to a plurality of products;

computer readable program code configured to extract, from the product data, dependency information for the plurality of products;

computer readable program code configured to analyze the dependency information to determine dependencies for each product of the plurality of products; and

computer readable program code configured to display the dependencies for each product of the plurality of products to a user.

20. An apparatus comprising:

a memory; and

at least one processor, coupled to the memory, and operative to;

gather, from a plurality of sources, product data pertaining to a plurality of products;

extract, from the product data, dependency information for the plurality of products;

analyze the dependency information to determine dependencies for each product of the plurality of products; and

display the dependencies for each product of the plurality of products to a user.

21. An apparatus comprising:

means for gathering, from a plurality of sources, product data pertaining to a plurality of products;

means for extracting, from the product data, dependency information for the plurality of products;

means for analyzing the dependency information to determine dependencies for each product of the plurality of products; and

means for displaying the dependencies for each product of the plurality of products to a user.