Information-technology workflow using tiles that declaratively specify datatypes

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2018165113-A1
Application number	US-201715458520-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Mar 14, 2017
Priority date	Dec 9, 2016
Publication date	Jun 14, 2018
Grant date	—

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:
executing a first operation of a first tile in a set of tiles arranged in a workflow; transferring a first result of the first operation for use as a first argument that conforms to a datatype specified by a second tile; and 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.

2 . The process of claim 1 wherein the first result conforms to a datatype specified by the second tile.

3 . The process of claim 1 wherein the transferring further comprises transferring data from a source other than the first tile to the second tile to serve as a second argument to the second operation, the second argument conforming to a second datatype declaratively specified by the second tile.

4 . The process of claim 3 wherein the data other than the first result is transferred from a data rack, the data being written to the data rack via a utility tile not included in the set of tiles arranged in a workflow.

5 . The process of claim 1 wherein the transferring includes translating the first result of the first tile into the first argument of the second tile using definitions of datatypes specified by the first and second tiles.

6 . The process of claim 1 wherein each datatype is a combination of one or more properties, each property having a respective data format.

7 . A system comprising non-transitory media encoded with code that, when executed using hardware, implements a process including:
executing a first operation of a first tile in a set of tiles arranged in a workflow; transferring a first result of the first operation for use as a first argument that conforms to a datatype specified by a second tile; and 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.

8 . The system of claim 7 wherein the first result conforms to a datatype specified by the second tile.

9 . The system of claim 7 wherein the transferring further comprises transferring data from a source other than the first tile to the second tile to serve as a second argument to the second operation, the second argument conforming to a second datatype declaratively specified by the second tile.

10 . The system of claim 9 wherein the data other than the first result is transferred from a data rack, the data being written to the data rack via a utility tile not included in the set of tiles arranged in a workflow.

11 . The system of claim 10 wherein the transferring includes translating the first result of the first tile into the first argument of the second tile using definitions of datatypes specified by the first and second tiles.

12 . The system of claim 7 wherein each datatype is a combination of one or more properties, each property having a respective data format.

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

Assignees

• Vmware Inc

Inventors

• Sinha Rakesh
• Nagaraja Vishwas
• Holzman Danny
• Dube Arjun

Classifications

• G06F9/4881

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

• G06F8/31

  Programming languages or programming paradigms · CPC title

• G06F8/24

  Object-oriented · CPC title

• G06F3/0482

  Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus · CPC title

• G06F8/60 Primary

  Software deployment · CPC title