Automatic enforcement of data retention policy for archived data

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2019108246-A1
Application number	US-201715725825-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Oct 5, 2017
Priority date	Oct 5, 2017
Publication date	Apr 11, 2019
Grant date	—

Abstract

Techniques and solutions are described for facilitating data archival, including for improving compliance with retention policies and legal requirements. Data objects can be assigned an expiration date based on properties of the data objects and rules associated with such properties. The data objects can be stored in an archive. In some cases, the data objects can be automatically deleted when the expiration date passes. In other cases, the data objects can be manually deleted when the expiration date passes, with deletion not occurring, and an error being generated, if the expiration date has not passed. Unstructured data objects can be associated with structured data objects through association lists, where an association list can be used to delete such unstructured data objects with or without deletion of an associated structured data object, and where the unstructured data objects can be linked with retention policy information of the structured data object.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1 . One or more computer-readable storage media storing computer-executable instructions for causing a computing system, the computing system comprising one or more processing units and one or more memories, when programmed thereby to perform operations for archiving and automatically deleting data objects, the operations comprising:
receiving a request to archive one or more data objects; requesting the one or more data objects from a data store; receiving the one or more data objects in response to the request; analyzing one or more properties of the one or more data objects; determining expiration dates associated with the one or more data objects based at least in part on the one or more properties; associating the expiration dates with the one or more data objects; and sending the one or more data objects to an archive to be stored, wherein the data objects are automatically deleted by the archive when the expiration date has passed.

2 . The one or more computer-readable storage media of claim 1 , wherein the one or more data objects comprise one or more unstructured data objects and one or more structured data objects.

3 . The one or more computer-readable storage media of claim 2 , wherein at least one of the one or more unstructured data objects is linked to a first structured data object of the one or more structured data objects and the operations further comprise:
generating an association list that associates the at least one or more of the unstructured data objects and the first structured data object.

4 . The one or more computer-readable storage media of claim 3 , the operations further comprising:
storing the association list in the archive.

5 . The one or more computer-readable storage media of claim 3 , the operations further comprising:
storing the association list in metadata of the first structured data object stored in the archive.

6 . The one or more computer-readable storage media of claim 1 , wherein receiving the request to archive one or more data objects comprises intercepting the request with a wrapper layer and the operations further comprise:
transforming the request from a first format to a second format, wherein the request in the second format is processed to send the one or more data objects to the archive to be stored.

7 . The one or more computer-readable storage media of claim 6 , wherein the second format is the Content Management Interoperability Services standard.

8 . The one or more computer-readable storage media of claim 7 , wherein the first format is the WebDAV format.

9 . A computing system that implements a data archival service, the computing system comprising:
one or more memories; one or more processing units coupled to the one or more memories; and one or more non-transitory computer readable storage media storing instructions that, when loaded into the memory, cause the one or more processing units to perform operations for:
receiving an archive request comprising one or more data objects, the one or more data objects having expiration dates automatically determined by one or more properties of the one or more data objects;
storing the one or more data objects in an archive;
automatically determining that an expiration date of a first data object of the one or more data objects has passed; and
deleting the first data object from the archive in response to automatically determining that the expiration date of the first data object has passed.

10 . The computing system of claim 9 , the operations further comprising:
determining that the first data object is associated with a second data object and deleting the second data object from the archive when the expiration date of the first data object has passed.

11 . The computing system of claim 10 , wherein the first data object is a structured data object and the second data object is an unstructured data object.

12 . The computing system of claim 9 , the operations further comprising:
receiving a request to update a retention status of a second data object of the one or more data objects; updating the retention status of the second data object; determining that the second data object is associated with a third data object of the one or more data objects; and updating the retention status of the third data object based on the request to update the retention status of the second data object.

13 . The computing system of claim 12 , wherein the request to update the retention status comprises a request to change the expiration date of the second data object.

14 . The computing system of claim 12 , wherein the request to update the retention status comprises a request to set a status flag to override the expiration date, wherein the second and third data objects are not deleted if the status flag is set even if the expiration date of the second data object has passed.

15 . The computing system of claim 14 , the operations further comprising:
receiving a user request to delete the second data object; determining that the status flag has been set; and returning a message to the user that the second data object cannot be deleted.

16 . The computing system of claim 12 , the operations further comprising:
receiving a user request to delete the second data object; determining that the expiration date has not passed; and returning a message to the user that the second data object cannot be deleted.

17 . In a computing environment, a method comprising:
receiving a plurality of structured data objects and a plurality of unstructured data objects to be archived, at least the plurality of structured data objects having expiration dates automatically determined by one or more properties of the structured data objects, a first structured data object being associated with a first association list identifying one or more unstructured data objects that are associated with the at least a first structured data object; receiving a request to delete the one or more unstructured data objects, the request comprising an identifier of the first association list; and deleting the one or more unstructured data objects of the first association list in response to the request.

18 . The method of claim 17 , further comprising:
receiving a request to delete one or more unstructured data objects of a second association list associated with a second structured data object, the request comprising an identifier of the second association list; determining that an expiration date of the second structured data object has not passed; and returning a message that the one or more unstructured data objects of the second association list cannot be deleted.

19 . The method of claim 17 , further comprising:
receiving a request to delete one or more unstructured data objects of a second association list associated with a second structured data object, the request comprising an identifier of the second association list; determining that that the second structured data object has a status flag overriding an expiration date of the second structured data object, wherein the second structured data object is not deleted if the status flag is set even if the expiration date of the second structured data object has passed; and returning a message that the one or more unstructured data objects of the second association list cannot be deleted.

20 . The method of claim 17 , wherein the first association list in maintained as part of the first structured data o

Assignees

• Sap Se

Inventors

• Jois Sharath
• Choegyen Tenzin

Classifications

• G06F17/30303 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F17/30371

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F17/30309

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F16/90 Primary

  Details of database functions independent of the retrieved data types · CPC title

• G06F16/122

  using management policies (point-in-time backing up or restoration of persistent data G06F11/1446; file migration policies for HSM systems G06F16/185) · CPC title