Recording information about an item

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9805082-B2
Application number	US-20762808-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Sep 10, 2008
Priority date	Sep 10, 2008
Publication date	Oct 31, 2017
Grant date	Oct 31, 2017

Abstract

Among other disclosed subject matter, a computer program product is tangibly embodied in a computer-readable storage medium and includes instructions that when executed by a processor perform a method for recording information about an item. The method includes assigning a unique identifier to an item in a repository, the item supporting versioning and being subject to a data model having no predefined schema for items. The method includes associating a first attribute with the unique identifier, the first attribute being part of the item and being configured for modification. The method includes associating the first attribute with a version number, wherein the versioning is supported without recording in the repository a time period when the first attribute is valid.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A computer program product tangibly embodied in a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium and comprising instructions that when executed by a processor perform a method for recording information about an item, the method comprising:
assigning a unique identifier to an item stored in a repository, the item being included in a set of items, the item supporting versioning and being subject to a data model having no selection of predefined schemas for items, such that an appropriate schema can be derived for the item at a given point in time;
associating an attribute with the unique identifier of the item, the attribute being part of the item and being configured for modification, wherein the attribute includes a type identifier that defines a status of the attribute for an instance of the item, the status including at least one of mandatory, expected, and optional;
associating the attribute with a particular version number of the item during a particular time period of the item, the attribute valid for the particular time period, wherein the versioning is supported without recording in the repository that the attribute is valid for the particular time period; and
deriving a schema based on information included in items of the set of items, the information comprising the attribute.

2. The computer program product of claim 1 , wherein the attribute includes at least a uniform resource indicator (URI) and a source of the attribute.

3. The computer program product of claim 1 , further comprising obtaining the particular version number by incrementing an earlier version number associated with an earlier version of the attribute by a predetermined amount.

4. The computer program product of claim 1 , further comprising:
adding an association to the item stored in the repository, the association comprising that the item is associated in the repository with another item also subject to the data model; and
associating the association with an association version number.

5. The computer program product of claim 1 , further comprising:
associating an additional attribute with the unique identifier, the additional attribute being part of the item and being configured for modification; and
associating the additional attribute with an additional attribute version number of the item during an additional time period of when the item was valid, the additional attribute valid for the additional time period, wherein the version is supported without recording in the repository the additional attribute for the additional time period.

6. The computer program product of claim 1 , further comprising:
asynchronously updating another repository about the particular version number, the other repository storing version numbers for a plurality of items organized by cycle numbers.

7. The computer program product of claim 6 , wherein the repository and the other repository are configured such that:
updating the item to a previous version number is performed using the repository without accessing the other repository and without querying the repository based on a time stamp; and
obtaining a past state relating to the item and at least one associated item is performed using the other repository to obtain a valid version number for the associated item corresponding to a version number that the item had in the past state.

8. The computer program product of claim 1 , further comprising:
synchronously updating another repository about the version number, the other repository storing version numbers for a plurality of items organized by cycle numbers.

9. A computer program product tangibly embodied in a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium and comprising instructions that when executed by a processor perform a method for obtaining an earlier version of an item, the method comprising:
identifying the item stored in a repository for which an earlier version is to be obtained, the item being included in a set of items, the item supporting versioning and being subject to a data model having no selection of predefined schemas for items, such that an appropriate schema can be derived for the item at a given point in time;
obtaining, from the repository and using a version number associated with the earlier version of the item, attributes having an association with the item, wherein:
the attributes include type identifiers that define a status of an instance of the item, the status including at least one of mandatory, expected, and optional, and
a time period when the association of the attributes and the version number associated with the earlier version of the item is valid is not recorded in the repository;

receiving information including which attributes were valid for the version number of the item during the time period;
generating the earlier version of the item based on the information about the attributes; and
deriving a schema based on information included in items of the set of items, the information comprising the attributes.

10. The computer program product of claim 9 , wherein identifying further includes identifying the item by a unique identifier.

11. A computer program product tangibly embodied in a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium and comprising instructions that when executed by a processor perform a method for recording versioning information about an item, the method comprising:
receiving from a first repository a unique identifier and a version number of a particular item, and further receiving identifiers for additional items associated with the version number of the particular item, wherein a time period when the association of the additional items and the version number of the particular item is valid is not recorded in the first repository, the particular item being included in a set of items, the particular item supporting versioning and being subject to a data model having no selection of predefined schemas for items, such that an appropriate schema can be derived for the item at a given point in time;
assigning a cycle number to the item in response to the receiving, the cycle number based on an earlier cycle number associated with an earlier version of the item;
storing the cycle number and associations of the identifiers for the additional items and the version number of the particular item in a second repository at a particular time; and
deriving a schema based on information included in items of the set of items, the information comprising one or more attributes of the particular item.

12. The computer program product of claim 11 , wherein assigning the cycle number comprises incrementing an earlier cycle number by a predetermined amount, the earlier cycle number and an earlier version number being associated with the item identifier.

13. The computer program product of claim 11 , wherein receiving further comprises:
receiving the unique identifier and the version number of a particular item, and the identifiers for the additional items asynchronously.

14. The computer program product of claim 11 , wherein identifying the item comprises:
receiving the unique identifier and the version number of a particular item, and the identifiers for the additional items synchronously.

15. A computer program product tangibly embodied in a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium and comprising instructions that when executed by a processor perform a method for identifying earlier versions of associated items, the method comprising:
identifying a particular item having a particular version number, wherein a previous version of the particular item and at lea

Assignees

• Bornhoevd Christof
• Werner Horst
• Sap Se

Inventors

• Bornhoevd Christof
• Werner Horst

Classifications

• G06F16/2329 Primary

  using versioning · CPC title

• G06F16/219

  Managing data history or versioning (querying versioned data G06F16/2474; querying temporal data G06F16/2477) · CPC title

• G06Q30/00

  Commerce · CPC title

• G06F11/1471

  involving logging of persistent data for recovery · CPC title

• G06Q10/06

  Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling · CPC title