Information-technology workflows using executable tiles

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10732934-B2
Application number	US-201715458428-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Mar 14, 2017
Priority date	Dec 9, 2016
Publication date	Aug 4, 2020
Grant date	Aug 4, 2020

Abstract

A workflow is expressed as an arrangement of a set of executable tile. In some embodiments, the tiles include operations expressed in different programming languages. A tile can include a declarative specification of datatypes so that external agents, e.g., workflow services, can identify the datatypes and schemas required as arguments and produced as result; this simplifies the defining of a workflow, e.g., by a workflow coder. A tile can have zero, one, or plural user interfaces; selection of a user interface from plural user interfaces can be based on a user selection, on user roles, or on tile lifecycle stage. Workflow services can communicate with each other so that workflows can be distributed and shifted among processor nodes.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A process comprising:
installing tile bundles, each tile bundle including tile-operation executables, user interfaces, datatype definitions, and metadata, the tile-operation executables, user interfaces, datatype definitions, and metadata being separate from each other, the metadata associating the user interfaces and datatype definitions with the tile-operation executables to define tiles with datatypes defined for arguments to be received and for results to be produced by each tile, each of the tiles having a respective Application Program Interface (API), wherein said user interfaces are provided to a user based upon criteria selected from the group consisting of:
permissions assigned to said user; and
a lifecycle stage of a tile corresponding to said user interface;

arranging tiles selected from the tile bundles into a first workflow;
executing a first operation of a first tile in the first workflow;
transferring a first result of the first operation for use as a first argument by a second tile of the first workflow using a workflow definition which specifies argument data to be populated from a data rack associated with a datatype;
executing a second operation of the second tile to yield a second result that is, at least in part, a function of the first result;
performing a user authentication outside of said first workflow and a second workflow, wherein said permissions assigned to said user being used to allow/prevent access to said user interfaces and other aspects of said first workflow and said second workflow; and
determining a selected user interface as a function of said permissions assigned to said user wherein said selected user interface is provided to said user.

2. The process of claim 1 wherein the first operation is expressed in a first programming language and the second operation is expressed in a second programming language different from the first programming language.

3. The process of claim 1 wherein the execution of the first operation, the execution of the second operation, and the transfer of the first result are controlled by workflow services based on a workflow definition that is separate from the first and second tiles.

4. The process of claim 1 wherein the first operation, when executed, accesses a first resource external to the workflow and the second operation, when executed, accesses a second resource external to the workflow.

5. The process of claim 1 further comprising executing a second workflow including the first tile but not including the second tile of the set.

6. The process of claim 1 further comprising:
transferring the second result of the second operation for use as a second argument by a third tile of the set; and
executing a third operation of the third tile to produce a third result that is, at least in part, a function of the second result.

7. A system comprising non-transitory media encoded with code that, when executed by hardware, implements a process including:
installing tile bundles, each tile bundle including tile-operation executables, user interfaces, datatype definitions, and metadata, the tile-operation executables, user interfaces, datatype definitions, and metadata being separate from each other, the metadata associating the user interfaces and datatype definitions with the tile-operation executables to define tiles with datatypes defined for arguments to be received and for results to be produced by each tile, each of the tiles having a respective Application Program Interface (API), wherein said user interfaces are provided to a user based upon criteria selected from the group consisting of:
permissions assigned to said user; and
a lifecycle stage of a tile corresponding to said user interface;

arranging tiles selected from the tile bundles into a first workflow;
executing a first operation of a first tile in the first workflow;
transferring a first result of the first operation for use as a first argument by a second tile of the first workflow using a workflow definition which specifies argument data to be populated from a data rack associated with a datatype;
executing a second operation of the second tile to yield a second result that is, at least in part, a function of the first result;
performing a user authentication outside of said first workflow and a second workflow, wherein said permissions assigned to said user being used to allow/prevent access to said user interfaces and other aspects of said first workflow and said second workflow; and
determining a selected user interface as a function of said permissions assigned to said user wherein said selected user interface is provided to said user.

8. The system of claim 7 wherein the first operation is expressed in a first programming language and the second operation is expressed in a second programming language different from the first programming language.

9. The process of claim 7 wherein the execution of the first operation, the execution of the second operation, and the transfer of the first result are controlled by workflow services based on a workflow definition that is separate from the first and second tiles.

10. The system of claim 7 wherein the first operation, when executed, accesses a first resource external to the workflow and the second operation, when executed, accesses a second resource external to the workflow.

11. The system of claim 7 further comprising executing a second workflow including the first tile but not including the second tile of the set.

12. The process of claim 7 further comprising:
transferring the second result of the second operation for use as a second argument by a third tile of the set; and
executing a third operation of the third tile to produce a third result that is, at least in part, a function of the second result.

13. The system of claim 7 further comprising the hardware.

Assignees

• Vmware Inc

Inventors

• Sinha Rakesh
• Nagaraja Vishwas
• Holzman Danny
• Pendyala Nagaraju
• Malani Parthiv
• Dube Arjun

Classifications

• G06F8/36 Primary

  Software reuse · CPC title

• G06F2009/4557

  Distribution of virtual machine instances; Migration and load balancing · CPC title

• G06F8/31

  Programming languages or programming paradigms · CPC title

• G06F9/4881

  Scheduling strategies for dispatcher, e.g. round robin, multi-level priority queues · CPC title

• G06F8/24 Primary

  Object-oriented · CPC title