SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CONFIGURABLE TRADING SYSTEM

• US 20120143925A1
• Filed: 11/30/2011
• Published: 06/07/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 09/30/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Lakshitha C. Surasinghe
• Original Assignee: Lakshitha C. Surasinghe
• Inventors: Surasinghe, Lakshitha C.
• Granted Patent: US 9,256,627 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/805
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/22 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/70 Software maintenance or management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/44505 Configuring for program initiating, e.g. using registry, configuration files
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/04 Billing or invoicing
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/04 Trading; Exchange, e.g. stocks, commodities, derivatives or currency exchange
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 15/43 Billing software details
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 15/51 for resellers, retailers or service providers
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2215/54 Resellers-retail or service providers billing, e.g. agreements with telephone service operator, activation, charging/recharging of accounts

Abstract

A system dynamically integrates, into an application program that implements rules for controlling business operations, changes in parameters and parameter groupings that are used by or in conjunction with the rules. A dynamic business logic rule integrator provides the rules to the application software as executable routines, and a dynamic parameter manager organizes and manages the parameters. The manager integrates changes to the parameters, groups and/or links the parameters, and makes the parameters available to the rules through a dynamically configurable system database—using a set of static tables and related dynamically configurable tables, in which certain database fields or sub-fields correspond to the parameters and the tables, fields and sub-fields are established and linked together in accordance with user-defined “instances.” When parameters and their groupings are changed the manager updates, creates and/or removes database tables, and the revised tables are made available to the rules.

Claims

1. A system for dynamically managing parameters that are utilized by business logic rules incorporated into an application program, the system including:

a rule-based engine for controlling business operations in accordance with a set of business logic rules;

an application program for executing the business logic rules using system hardware and software;

a dynamically configurable database that includes fields and sub-fields that correspond to parameters that are associated with base entities that are used in the business logic rules; and

a dynamic parameter manager sub-system for providing to an end user one or more interfaces through which the database fields and sub-fields are available for creating, editing and grouping the parameters associated with the base entities, the sub-system providing the groupings of the parameters for use by the business logic rules.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the dynamic parameter manager sub-system further provides to the end user one or more interfaces through which the fields and sub-fields are created and edited by assigning to the fields and sub-fields one or more attributes.

3. The system of claim 1 wherein the dynamic parameter manager sub-system

provides one or more interfaces through which the end user defines categories within the base entities by associating selective groupings of the parameters with the respective categories;

and

links the user-defined categories of a given base entity with the business logic rules through at least the respective parameters and any groupings of parameters that are required to be included in the categories of the given base entity.

4. The system of claim 3 wherein the dynamic parameter manager sub-system produces

for a given base entity a static database table with rows for the associated categories and columns for the associated parameters and groupings of parameters that are required in the categories and parameters and groupings of parameters that may be selectively added by the end user to the categories, and

for a given category a dynamically configurable database table that has columns for the fields and sub-fields associated with the parameters and any groupings of parameters that define the category.

5. The system of claim 4 wherein the dynamic parameter manager sub-system

associates parameters with the base entities by adding columns for the corresponding fields and sub-fields to the static database tables, and

associates parameters with the categories by adding columns for the corresponding fields and sub-fields to the dynamically configurable database tables.

6. The system of claim 5 wherein the dynamic parameter manager sub-system adds or deletes columns of the static database tables and dynamically configurable database tables to add or delete corresponding parameters from the definitions of the base entities and the categories in accordance with changes in the business logic rules.

7. The system of claim 6 wherein the dynamic parameter manager sub-system provides to the end user one or more interfaces through which the fields and sub-fields associated with a given category may be associated with values to define respective instances of the category.

8. The system of claim 7 wherein the dynamic parameter manager sub-system creates rows in the dynamically configurable database table corresponding to the category for the respective instances and fills the columns with the user provided values to define the instances.

9. The system of claim 7 wherein the dynamic parameter manager sub-system links a given category with categories of other base entities by including associated pointers in the corresponding dynamically configurable database table.

10. The system of claim 3 wherein the dynamic parameter manager sub-system further makes available through an interface to the end user the fields and sub-fields for the parameters and the groupings of parameters both required for the categories and available for selective inclusion in the categories within a given base entity.

11. The system of claim 10 wherein the dynamic parameter manager sub-system

includes in a static table associated with a given base entity rows for end-user defined categories of the base entity, and

creates a dynamically configurable category database table for each category with columns for the respective fields and sub-fields for the parameters that are required for the category and also columns for the respective fields and sub-fields for the parameters that the user has selectively included in the definition of the category.

12. The system of claim 11 wherein the dynamic parameter manager sub-system includes in the dynamically configurable table one or more column pointers to tables for any groupings of parameters that define categories contained within other base entities.

13. The system of claim 11 wherein the dynamic parameter manager sub-system includes in the dynamically configurable database tables respective rows for instances of the categories.

14. The system of claim 12 wherein the dynamic parameter manager sub-system provides an interface to the end user through which the end user selects categories of related base entities for inclusion in the definition of a category of a given base entity.

15. The system of claim 14 wherein the dynamic parameter manager sub-system provides an interface to the end user through which the end user modifies, adds and deletes properties of one or more fields and sub-fields of a given category.

16. The system of claim 15 wherein the dynamic parameter manager sub-system provides an interface to the end user through which the end user adds new fields and sub-fields to the definition of a given category.

17. The system of claim 16 wherein the dynamic parameter manager sub-system

provides an interface to the end user through which the end user adds instances to the categories,

adds to the dynamically configurable database table corresponding to the category a row for each added instance, and

fills in the columns of the respective rows with information provided by the end user for the instances.

18. The system of claim 13 wherein the sub-system

provides to the end user through an interface a listing of parameters that are required for a category of a given base entity and parameters that may be associated with a category of the base entity, and

includes in the definition of a given category the required parameters and the parameters selectively added by the end user.