Extracting data from a blockchain network

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11449476-B2
Application number	US-202016829535-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Mar 25, 2020
Priority date	Apr 24, 2019
Publication date	Sep 20, 2022
Grant date	Sep 20, 2022

Abstract

The invention relates to a method for a model-driven extraction of event data representing an event occurring on a blockchain network by a computational device with access to the blockchain network. The computational device is configured as an ETL-device for executing an ETL-code to modify a data content of an external data structure external of the blockchain network using the extracted event data. The method comprising detecting the event, determining an event schema, providing and executing a the ETL-code. The ETL-code comprises machine-executable instructions for extracting the event data representing the detected event, transforming the extracted event data using the event schema to comply with a data model defining a logical structure of the external data structure and loading the transformed data to the external data structure to modify the data content of the external data structure.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A method for performing a model-driven extraction of event data representing an event occurring on a blockchain network by a computational device with access to the blockchain network, the method comprising:
detecting the event occurring on the blockchain network;
determining an event schema for the detected event;
extracting the event data representing the detected event;
transforming the extracted event data using the event schema to comply with a data model of an external data structure;
mapping, based on the determined event schema and the data model, the event data to a logical structure of the external data structure; and
loading the transformed event data to the external data structure to modify a data content of the external data structure based on the mapping.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
messaging the transformed event data by the computational device via a messaging network to an external computational device external to the blockchain network, wherein the external computational device manages the external data structure.

3. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
mapping, based on the determined event schema and the data model of the external data structure, the event data to the logical structure of the external data structure; and
generating ETL-code for the event using the mapping.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the computational device is inside the blockchain network in the form of an ETL-peer.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the computational device is an external computational device configured to monitor data exchanged on the blockchain network using a cryptographically secured messaging connection to a peer of the blockchain network.

6. The method of claim 4 , wherein detecting the event occurring on the blockchain network comprises:
detecting event data being provided by the ETL-peer to be added to a blockchain as part of a block of the blockchain.

7. The method of claim 4 , wherein detecting the event occurring on the blockchain network comprises:
monitoring data being routed on the blockchain network via the ETL-peer using a communication protocol of the blockchain network.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the event schema is determined using a library providing one or more event schemas identifying logical structures of event data representing one or more types of events potentially occurring on the blockchain network.

9. The method of claim 8 , further comprising:
responsive to determining that none of the event schemas provided by the library match the logical structure of the event data of the detected event, analyzing the logical structure of the event data of the detected event;
determining an additional event schema matching the logical structure of the event data of the detected event; and
adding the additional event schema to the library.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining the event schema comprises:
tagging one or more data elements comprising the event data using the determined event schema, wherein tags identify one or more structural types of data elements defined by the determined event schema.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein the tags map tagged data elements to one or more structural elements defined by the logical structure of the external data structure.

12. The method of claim 1 , wherein the external data structure is provided in the form of a database and a database management system for managing the database using the data model.

13. The method of claim 12 , wherein the data model used by the database management system for managing the database is selected from a list consisting of:
a relational data model, a hierarchical data model, a network data model, an object-oriented data model, a graph data model, an entity-relationship model data model, a key value data model, a multidimensional data model, a column-oriented data model, a document oriented data model, and a data stream data model.

14. The method of claim 1 , wherein the transforming of the extracted event data comprises:
adding one or more structural IDs according to the data model to the extracted event data.

15. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
responsive to determining that the detected event comprises a data delete, executing a callback to retrieve a plurality of additional data from the blockchain network;
identifying, based on the additional data, one or more data elements to be deleted from the external data structure to modify the data content of the external data structure in accordance with the data delete.

16. The method of claim 15 , wherein the callback targets a blockchain provided by the blockchain network or a local data collection provided by a peer of the blockchain network.

17. The method of claim 1 , wherein the event data is extracted from a block of a blockchain provided by the blockchain network.

18. The method of claim 17 , wherein the blockchain is a permissioned blockchain with restricted access to extract data from the blockchain, wherein the computational device is registered and comprises access rights enabling the computational device to extract data from the blockchain.

19. The method of claim 17 , wherein the blockchain comprises encrypted data, wherein the computational device has access to a decryption key, and wherein the extracting of event data comprises decrypting the event data.

20. The method of claim 17 , wherein extracting the event data further comprises:
retrieving a plurality of additional event data from a local data collection provided by a peer of the blockchain network, wherein the additional event data is assigned to the event data extracted from the block of the blockchain.

21. The method of claim 20 , wherein the local data collection is a private data collection shared by a limited set of peers of the blockchain network, and wherein private data of the private data collection is routed using cryptographically secured communication connections restricted to use by one or more peers of the limited set of peers.

22. The method of claim 1 , wherein the loading comprises a write request using the transformed event data.

23. The method of claim 22 , wherein the write request comprises a request selected from a list consisting of:
updating a data element of the data content of the external data structure using the transformed data, deleting a data element of the data content of the external data structure identified by the transformed data, inserting an additional data element provided by the transformed data into the data content of the external data structure.

24. A computer program product comprising a non-volatile computer-readable storage medium having computer-readable program code embodied therewith for a model-driven extraction of event data representing an event occurring on a blockchain network by a computational device with access to the blockchain network, the computer-readable program code executable by a processor to cause the processor to perform a method comprising the steps of:
detecting the event occurring on the blockchain network;
determining an event schema for the detected event;
extracting the event data representing the detected event;
transforming the extracted event data using the event schema to comply with a data model of an external data structure;
mapping, based on the determined event schema and the data model, the event data to a logi

Assignees

• IBM

Inventors

• Oberhofer Martin
• Mentzel Florian
• Pham The Hien
• Thevarajah Thishanth

Classifications

• G06F16/212 Primary

  with details for data modelling support · CPC title

• G06F16/254 Primary

  Extract, transform and load [ETL] procedures, e.g. ETL data flows in data warehouses · CPC title

• G06F16/28

  Databases characterised by their database models, e.g. relational or object models · CPC title

• H04L9/3239 Primary

  involving non-keyed hash functions, e.g. modification detection codes [MDCs], MD5, SHA or RIPEMD · CPC title

• H04L63/0428

  wherein the data content is protected, e.g. by encrypting or encapsulating the payload · CPC title