Recognition of and support for multiple versions of an enterprise canonical message model

• US 8,631,071 B2
• Filed: 12/17/2009
• Issued: 01/14/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 12/17/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: ServiceNow Incorporated
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Coldicott, Peter Alan, Pendergrass, Harry Thomas, Lane, Eoin
• Primary Examiner(s): Nguyen, Thu
• Assistant Examiner(s): WIDHALM, ANGELA M
• Application Number:
  US12/640,865
• Publication Number:
  US 20110153767A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,489 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 709/204
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/10 Requirements analysis; Specification techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/24 Object-oriented

Abstract

A method of recognizing and supporting multiple versions of a canonical message model in a service oriented architecture industry model repository comprising determining differences between at least one first version of a message model and at least one other version of the message model; mapping the differences between the different versions of the message models to the SOA IMR; and providing the mapping of the differences between the message models to a message access service, mapping of differences between the message models are applied and updated to the later of the message models to support the versions of the canonical message models seamlessly.

Claims

1. A method for concurrently supporting multiple versions of an industry model repository (IMR) at runtime, the method comprising the steps of:

semantically searching for available computing resources for a plurality of businesses conducting commerce in different industries, the available computing resources being searched using an industry model repository (IMR) architecture system comprising;

(a) a first layer of abstraction comprising business specific model assets,

(b) a second layer of abstraction comprising a plurality of topic maps, each of the topic maps comprising a set of topics of capturing characteristics and relationships among the business specific model assets and other topics, associations having a specific association type and association role played by a designated topic, and occurrences defining business specific instances of the business specific model assets, each of the occurrences having an occurrence type that links to a specific one of the topics and an occurrence locator indicating an accessible network location in a federated asset repository where a corresponding specific instance is stored; and

(c) a third layer of abstraction comprising service oriented architecture (“

SOA”

) program services that utilize the topic maps of the second layer to semantically search for the business specific model assets,

wherein one or more of the services of the third layer of abstraction and linkages between the topic maps of the second layer of abstraction change over time as indicated by different versions of the industry model repository (IMR) of the second layer, wherein the searching step searches the computing resources based on linkages specific to a particular one of the different versions of the industry model repository (IMR), wherein a plurality of different versions are concurrently active at runtime and are used by different ones of the plurality of different businesses to access the business specific model assets of the first layer using the SOA program services of the third layer;

a first computing device executing a first SOA service available for the searching and use at a first time when a first version of the different versions of the industry model repository (IMR) is available to the first computing device and a second SOA available for the searching and use at a second, later time using a second version of the industry model repository but not available for the searching and use at the first time;

a second computing device executing the second SOA service at approximately the first time when the first version of the industry model repository is available to the second computing device, the second computing device executing the second SOA service at approximately the second time; and

at least one computing device of the industry model repository (IMR) enabling the first computing device to execute the first SOA service at the first time, enabling the first computing device to execute the second SOA at the second time, enabling the second computing device to execute the second SOA service at approximately the first and at approximately the second time, thereby permitting concurrent use of different versions of the industry model repository (IMR) by different devices without modification or redeployment of the industry model repository (IMR).

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

at least one of the one or more computing devices, defining and storing differences within the second layer of abstraction between the first version and the second version of the industry model repository within a data store accessible at the second layer of abstraction.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein software of the first and third layers of abstraction are able to concurrently access functions of the second layer of abstraction executing at different versions of the different versions of the industry model repository (IMR) without runtime problems, thereby permitting graceful upgrades of the different layers of abstraction without service interrupts.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

at least one of the one or more computing devices, determining from stored differences between the first version and the second version of the industry model repository that input parameters differ between a first SOA service for handling a received request and the second SOA version of a corresponding SOA service the first SOA being compliant with a first version of the IMR and the corresponding SOA service being compliant with the second version of the IMR, said corresponding SOA service being an updated version of the SOA service;

at least one of the one or more computing devices at the second layer of abstraction receiving a message from the first layer or from the second layer, said message having input parameters compliant with the first SOA and not complaint with the second SOA, at runtime, programs executing at the second layer of abstraction dynamically modifying the message to be compatible with the corresponding SOA service using the stored differences; and

conveying the modified message to the corresponding SOA service, which executes in the third layer of abstraction in response to receiving the modified message.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

at least one of the one or more computing devices, determining from stored differences between the first version and the second version of the industry model repository that parameters differ between a first business specific asset and a corresponding business specific asset, said corresponding business specific asset being updated for the second version of the industry model repository, said first business specific asset being for the first version of the industry model repository;

at least one of the one or more computing devices at the second layer of abstraction receiving a message from the third of second layer requesting the first business specific asset of the first layer, said message having parameters compliant with the first business specific asset and not for the corresponding business specific asset, at runtime, programs executing at the second layer of abstraction dynamically modifying the message to be compatible with the corresponding business specific asset using the stored differences; and

utilizing the modified message to access the corresponding business specific asset.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the program services of the third layer of abstraction comprise at least different types of services from a group of:

a runtime message access service;

a registration and profile management service;

a creating and customizing repository meta model;

an importing customized and disparate model/data into the repository;

a service for examining complex diagrams and structures;

a service for changing disparate ones of the business specific model assets;

a service for advanced search and query;

a service for navigating the business specific model assets;

a service to select and download the business specific model assets;

a service to customize the business specific model assets; and

a service for performing impact analysis.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the business specific assets of the first layer of abstraction comprise at least three different types of business specific assets from a group of:

a framework asset;

an industry model asset;

a business model;

a Unified Modeling Language (UML) design application;

a data model;

a business service;

a service component; and

a technical service.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the service oriented architecture (“

SOA”

) SOA program services of the third layer of abstraction interface with user facing user interfaces, said user interfaces including user interfaces for report generation for the business specific assets and for complex view visualization tools for the business specific assets.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the topic maps of the second layer are compliant with an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard for topic maps.

10. A computer system comprising:

one or more processors, one or more computer-readable memories and one or more computer-readable, tangible storage devices;

program instructions, stored on at least one of the one or more storage devices for execution by at least one of the one or more processors via at least one of the one or more memories, to semantically search for available computing resources for a plurality of businesses conducting commerce in different industries, the available computing resources being searched using an industry model repository (IMR) architecture system comprising;

(a) a first layer of abstraction comprising business specific model assets,

(b) a second layer of abstraction comprising a plurality of topic maps, each of the topic maps comprising a set of topics of capturing characteristics and relationships among the business specific model assets and other topics, associations having a specific association type and association role played by a designated topic, and occurrences defining business specific instances of the business specific model assets, each of the occurrences having an occurrence type that links to a specific one of the topics and an occurrence locator indicating an accessible network location in a federated asset repository where a corresponding specific instance is stored; and

(c) a third layer of abstraction comprising service oriented architecture (“

SOA”

) program services that utilize the topic maps of the second layer to semantically search for the business specific model assets,

wherein one or more of the services of the third layer of abstraction and linkages between the topic maps of the second layer of abstraction change over time as indicated by different versions of the industry model repository (IMR) of the second layer, wherein the searching step searches the computing resources based on linkages specific to a particular one of the different versions of the industry model repository (IMR), wherein a plurality of different versions are concurrently active at runtime and are used by different ones of the plurality of different businesses to access the business specific model assets of the first layer using the SOA program services of the third layer;

a first computing device executing a first SOA service available for the searching and use at a first time when a first version of the different versions of the industry model repository (IMR) is available to the first computing device and a second SOA available for the searching and use at a second, later time using a second version of the industry model repository but not available for the searching and use at the first time;

a second computing device executing the second SOA service at approximately the first time when the first version of the industry model repository is available to the second computing device, the second computing device executing the second SOA service at approximately the second time; and

at least one computing device of the industry model repository (IMR) enabling the first computing device to execute the first SOA service at the first time, enabling the first computing device to execute the second SOA at the second time, enabling the second computing device to execute the second SOA service at approximately the first and at approximately the second time, thereby permitting concurrent use of different versions of the industry model repository (IMR) by different devices without modification or redeployment of the industry model repository (IMR).

11. The computer system of claim 10, further comprising:

program instructions, stored on at least one of the one or more storage devices for execution by at least one of the one or more processors via at least one of the one or more memories, to define and store differences within the second layer of abstraction between the first version and the second version of the industry model repository within a data store accessible at the second layer of abstraction.

12. The computer system of claim 10, wherein software of the first and third layers of abstraction are able to concurrently access functions of the second layer of abstraction executing at different versions of the different versions of the industry model repository (IMR) without runtime problems, thereby permitting graceful upgrades of the different layers of abstraction without service interrupts.

13. The computer system of claim 10, further comprising:

program instructions, stored on at least one of the one or more storage devices for execution by at least one of the one or more processors via at least one of the one or more memories, to determine from stored differences between the first version and the second version of the industry model repository that input parameters differ between a first SOA service for handling a received request and the second SOA version of a corresponding SOA service the first SOA being compliant with a first version of the IMR and the corresponding SOA service being compliant with the second version of the IMR, said corresponding SOA service being an updated version of the SOA service;

program instructions, stored on at least one of the one or more storage devices for execution by at least one of the one or more processors via at least one of the one or more memories, to, at the second layer of abstraction, receive a message from the first layer or from the second layer, said message having input parameters compliant with the first SOA and not complaint with the second SOA, at runtime, programs executing at the second layer of abstraction dynamically modifying the message to be compatible with the corresponding SOA service using the stored differences; and

program instructions, stored on at least one of the one or more storage devices for execution by at least one of the one or more processors via at least one of the one or more memories, to convey the modified message to the corresponding SOA service, which executes in the third layer of abstraction in response to receiving the modified message.

14. The computer system of claim 10, further comprising:

program instructions, stored on at least one of the one or more storage devices for execution by at least one of the one or more processors via at least one of the one or more memories, to determine from stored differences between the first version and the second version of the industry model repository that parameters differ between a first business specific asset and a corresponding business specific asset, said corresponding business specific asset being updated for the second version of the industry model repository, said first business specific asset being for the first version of the industry model repository;

program instructions, stored on at least one of the one or more storage devices for execution by at least one of the one or more processors via at least one of the one or more memories, to, at the second layer of abstraction, receive a message from the third of second layer requesting the first business specific asset of the first layer, said message having parameters compliant with the first business specific asset and not for the corresponding business specific asset, at runtime, programs executing at the second layer of abstraction dynamically modifying the message to be compatible with the corresponding business specific asset using the stored differences; and

program instructions, stored on at least one of the one or more storage devices for execution by at least one of the one or more processors via at least one of the one or more memories, to utilize the modified message to access the corresponding business specific asset.

15. A non-transitory computer-readable storage device comprising:

program instructions, stored on the storage device for execution by at least one of the one or more processors via at least one of the one or more memories, to semantically search for available computing resources for a plurality of businesses conducting commerce in different industries, the available computing resources being searched using an industry model repository (IMR) architecture system comprising;

(a) a first layer of abstraction comprising business specific model assets,

(b) a second layer of abstraction comprising a plurality of topic maps, each of the topic maps comprising a set of topics of capturing characteristics and relationships among the business specific model assets and other topics, associations having a specific association type and association role played by a designated topic, and occurrences defining business specific instances of the business specific model assets, each of the occurrences having an occurrence type that links to a specific one of the topics and an occurrence locator indicating an accessible network location in a federated asset repository where a corresponding specific instance is stored; and

(c) a third layer of abstraction comprising service oriented architecture (“

SOA”

) program services that utilize the topic maps of the second layer to semantically search for the business specific model assets,

wherein one or more of the services of the third layer of abstraction and linkages between the topic maps of the second layer of abstraction change over time as indicated by different versions of the industry model repository (IMR) of the second layer, wherein the searching step searches the computing resources based on linkages specific to a particular one of the different versions of the industry model repository (IMR), wherein a plurality of different versions are concurrently active at runtime and are used by different ones of the plurality of different businesses to access the business specific model assets of the first layer using the SOA program services of the third layer;

a first computing device executing a first SOA service available for the searching and use at a first time when a first version of the different versions of the industry model repository (IMR) is available to the first computing device and a second SOA available for the searching and use at a second, later time using a second version of the industry model repository but not available for the searching and use at the first time;

a second computing device executing the second SOA service at approximately the first time when the first version of the industry model repository is available to the second computing device, the second computing device executing the second SOA service at approximately the second time; and

at least one computing device of the industry model repository (IMR) enabling the first computing device to execute the first SOA service at the first time, enabling the first computing device to execute the second SOA at the second time, enabling the second computing device to execute the second SOA service at approximately the first and at approximately the second time, thereby permitting concurrent use of different versions of the industry model repository (IMR) by different devices without modification or redeployment of the industry model repository (IMR).

16. The storage device of claim 15, further comprising:

program instructions, stored on the storage device, to define and store differences within the second layer of abstraction between the first version and the second version of the industry model repository within a data store accessible at the second layer of abstraction.

17. The storage device of claim 15, wherein software of the first and third layers of abstraction are able to concurrently access functions of the second layer of abstraction executing at different versions of the different versions of the industry model repository (IMR) without runtime problems, thereby permitting graceful upgrades of the different layers of abstraction without service interrupts.

18. The storage device of claim 15, further comprising:

program instructions, stored on the storage device, to determine from stored differences between the first version and the second version of the industry model repository that input parameters differ between a first SOA service for handling a received request and the second SOA version of a corresponding SOA service the first SOA being compliant with a first version of the IMR and the corresponding SOA service being compliant with the second version of the IMR, said corresponding SOA service being an updated version of the SOA service;

program instructions, stored on the storage device, to, at the second layer of abstraction, receive a message from the first layer or from the second layer, said message having input parameters compliant with the first SOA and not complaint with the second SOA, at runtime, programs executing at the second layer of abstraction dynamically modifying the message to be compatible with the corresponding SOA service using the stored differences; and

program instructions, stored on the storage device, to convey the modified message to the corresponding SOA service, which executes in the third layer of abstraction in response to receiving the modified message.

19. The storage device of claim 15, further

program instructions, stored on the storage device, to determine from stored differences between the first version and the second version of the industry model repository that parameters differ between a first business specific asset and a corresponding business specific asset, said corresponding business specific asset being updated for the second version of the industry model repository, said first business specific asset being for the first version of the industry model repository;

program instructions, stored on the storage device, to, at the second layer of abstraction, receive a message from the third of second layer requesting the first business specific asset of the first layer, said message having parameters compliant with the first business specific asset and not for the corresponding business specific asset, at runtime, programs executing at the second layer of abstraction dynamically modifying the message to be compatible with the corresponding business specific asset using the stored differences; and

program instructions, stored on the storage device, to utilize the modified message to access the corresponding business specific asset.