Ranking contextual metadata to generate relevant data insights

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10650007-B2
Application number	US-201615184858-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jun 16, 2016
Priority date	Apr 25, 2016
Publication date	May 12, 2020
Grant date	May 12, 2020

Abstract

Aspects extend to methods, systems, and computer program products for ranking contextual metadata to generate relevant data insights. Aspects of the invention can be used to enhance data analytics by automatically deriving relevance signals used to generate insights closely related to the context in which a user is exploring or analyzing data. User experiences can include embedded data visualizations, search engines, and natural language querying systems to help users understand their data more effectively. By utilizing metrics on the relevance information, insights related and/or relevant to the context in which the user is analyzing data can be created. Thus, relevance information can define a scope for a variety of automatically generated insights of data. Insight generation can be based on computed relevance signals that target areas interesting to users.

First claim

What is claimed:

1. A computer system, the computer system comprising:
one or more hardware processors; and
system memory coupled to the one or more hardware processors, the system memory storing instructions that are executable by the one or more hardware processors;
the one or more hardware processors being configured to execute the instructions stored in the system memory to perform the following:
process a query comprising a Structured Query Language (SQL) command to retrieve structured data having a structured arrangement;
derive contextual metadata from parameters of the SQL command, the contextual metadata defining how the structured data was retrieved from a database;
identify a combination of topics relevant to the structured data based at least on the contextual metadata;
derive other metadata from user activities and settings at the computer system;
formulate one or more additional queries in the system memory to retrieve insights corresponding to the combination of topics, the one or more additional queries formulated from the contextual metadata and the other metadata;
submit the one or more additional queries to obtain the insights;
receive the insights subsequent to submitting the one or more additional queries; and
provide for presentation at a display device a first user interface element that includes the structured arrangement and a second user interface element that includes insight data from the insights, the presentation at the display device of the first user interface element being concurrent with the presentation of the second user interface element.

2. The computer system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to derive contextual metadata comprise the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to analyze a query used to retrieve the structured data for presentation at the display device in at least one of: a textual arrangement, a graphical arrangement, and a voice arrangement.

3. The computer system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to derive contextual metadata from parameters of the SQL command comprise the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to derive the intent of the query; and
wherein the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to identify the combination of topics relevant to the structured data comprise the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to identify one or more topics relevant to the intent of the query.

4. The computer system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to derive contextual metadata from parameters of the SQL command comprise the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to identify data filtering characteristics of the query.

5. The computer system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to derive contextual metadata from parameters of the SQL command comprise the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to identify types of calculations included in the query.

6. The computer system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to derive other metadata from user activities and settings at the computer system comprise the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to derive metadata from one or more of: user history, user settings, and search results.

7. The computer system of claim 1 , further comprising the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to determine resource availability at the computer system; and
wherein the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to submit the one or more additional queries to obtain the insights comprise the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to limit the number of queries that are processed based at least on the determined resource availability in view of a rank for each topic included in the combination of topics.

8. The computer system of claim 7 , wherein the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to determine resource availability at the computer system comprise the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to determine availability of the processor and system memory; and
wherein the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to limit the number of queries that are processed comprise the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to limit the number of queries that are processed to manage the processor and system memory availability.

9. The computer system of claim 8 , wherein the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to determine resource availability at the computer system comprise the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to determine availability of screen space at the display device, the available screen space limiting the quantity of insights that can be presented along with the structured arrangement;
wherein the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to limit the number of queries that are processed comprise the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to limit the number of queries that are processed to manage the available screen space; and
wherein the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to present insight data along with the structured arrangement at the display device comprise the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to present portions of the insights along with the structured arrangement at the display device within the available screen space.

10. The computer system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to formulate one or more additional queries to retrieve insights comprise the one or more hardware processors configured to execute the instructions to formulate at least one additional query that is a transform of the query.

11. A method for use at a computer system, the computer system including a hardware processor, system memory, and a display device, the method comprising:
accessing a query comprising a Structured Query Language (SQL) command that was processed to retrieve structured data that was presented at the display device in a structured arrangement;
deriving contextual metadata from parameters of the SQL command, the contextual metadata defining how the structured data was retrieved from a database;
identifying a combination of topics relevant to the structured data based at least on the contextual metadata;
deriving other metadata from user activities and settings at the computer system;
formulating one or more additional queries in the system memory to retrieve insights corresponding to the combination of topics, the one or more additional queries formulated from the contextual metadata and the other metadata;
submitting the one or more additional queries to obtain the insights;
receiving the insights subsequent to submitting the one or more additional queries;
storing the insights in the system memory; and
providing for presentation at a display device a first user interface element that includes the structured arrangement and a second user interface element that includes insight data from the system memory,

Assignees

• Microsoft Technology Licensing Llc

Inventors

• Azzam Saliha
• Breyer Steven Paul
• Shah Eeshan Manish
• El Fassy Fihry Youssef
• Sharma Ankur Satyendrakumar
• Alassaf Manal Hussein
• He Xiang
• Rajasekaran Vikram

Classifications

• G06F16/24578 Primary

  using ranking · CPC title

• G06F16/248

  Presentation of query results · CPC title

• G06F16/2457

  with adaptation to user needs · CPC title

• G06F16/2425 Primary

  Iterative querying; Query formulation based on the results of a preceding query · CPC title