Storing and retrieving context senstive data in a management system

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9852165-B2
Application number	US-201514877332-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 7, 2015
Priority date	Mar 14, 2013
Publication date	Dec 26, 2017
Grant date	Dec 26, 2017

Abstract

A management system may include a reconciliation engine configured to reconcile a first instance of a resource object from a first data provider and a second instance of the resource object from a second data provider to obtain a reconciled resource object, and store the first instance, and second instance, and the reconciled resource object in datasets. The management system may include a context sensitive query engine configured to receive a context-sensitive query including context information identifying a source originally providing context sensitive data associated with a context-sensitive attribute, and retrieve the context sensitive data from one or more of the datasets based on the context information.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A management system for resource reconciliation within a configuration management database, the management system comprising:
at least one processor and
a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, including instructions executable by the at least one processor, the instructions configured to implement;
a reconciliation engine configured to reconcile a first instance of a resource object and a second instance of the resource object to obtain a reconciled resource object, the first and second instances of the resource object sharing a common attribute, the common attribute of the first instance of the resource object having first provider-specific data, the common attribute of the second instance of the resource object having second provider-specific data;
the reconciliation engine configured to determine whether the common attribute is a context-sensitive attribute, wherein, when the common attribute is determined as the context-sensitive attribute, the reconciliation engine is configured to merge the first and second instances of the resource object according to a unique reconciliation rule such that the reconciled resource object includes both the first provider-specific data and the second provider-specific data; and
the reconciliation engine is configured to store the reconciled resource object in a target data partition of a configuration management database.

2. The management system of claim 1 , wherein the unique reconciliation rule is a reconciliation rule that is different than what is normally applied to a resource object without having the context-sensitive attribute.

3. The management system of claim 1 , wherein, when the common attribute is determined as the context-sensitive attribute, the reconciliation engine is configured to include source identification information within the reconciled resource object, the source identification information identifying a source of the first provider-specific data and a source of the second provider-specific data.

4. The management system of claim 1 , wherein, when the common attribute is not determined as the context-sensitive attribute, the reconciliation engine is configured to merge the first and second instances of the resource object according to a normal reconciliation rule such that the reconciled resource object includes either the first provider-specific data or the second provider-specific data, but not both.

5. The management system of claim 1 , wherein, when the common attribute is determined as the context-sensitive attribute, the reconciliation engine is configured to include default data within the reconciled resource object, the default data being results of a normal reconciliation rule that is applied to the first and second instances of the resource object, the normal reconciliation rule being a reconciliation rule that is applied to a resource object that does not have a context-sensitive attribute.

6. The management system of claim 1 , wherein the reconciliation engine is configured to assign a reconciliation identifier to the reconciled resource object.

7. The management system of claim 1 , further comprising:
a context-sensitive query engine configured to:
receive a query having context information;
query the target data partition in response to the query; and
retrieve either the first provider-specific data or the second provider-specific data from the reconciled resource object based on the context information.

8. The management system of claim 1 , further comprising:
a context-sensitive query engine configured to:
receive a query having context information that identifies a source of provider-specific data;
query the target data partition for the reconciled resource object in response to the query, and obtain a common key from the reconciled resource object;
query a first provider data partition for the first instance of the resource object using the common key when the context information specifies a first data provider, and obtain the first provider-specific data from the first instance of the resource object; and
query a second provider data partition for the second instance of the resource object using the common key when the context information specifies a second data provider, and obtain the second provider-specific data from the second instance of the resource object.

9. A computer-implemented method for resource reconciliation within a configuration management database, the method comprising:
reconciling a first instance of a resource object and a second instance of the resource object to obtain a reconciled resource object, the first and second instances of the resource object sharing a common attribute, the common attribute of the first instance of the resource object having first provider-specific data, the common attribute of the second instance of the resource object having second provider-specific data;
determining whether the common attribute is a context-sensitive attribute;
merging the first and second instances of the resource object according to a unique reconciliation rule when the common attribute is determined as the context-sensitive attribute such that the reconciled resource object includes both the first provider-specific data and the second provider-specific data, the unique reconciliation rule being a reconciliation rule that is different than what is normally applied to a resource object without having the context-sensitive attribute; and
storing the reconciled resource object in a target data partition of a configuration management database.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein, when the common attribute is determined as the context-sensitive attribute, the reconciled resource object also includes source identification information that identifies a source of the first provider-specific data and a source of the second provider-specific data.

11. The method of claim 9 , further comprising:
merging the first and second instances of the resource object according to a normal reconciliation rule when the common attribute is not determined as the context-sensitive attribute such that the reconciled resource object includes either the first provider-specific data or the second provider-specific data, but not both.

12. The method of claim 9 , wherein, when the common attribute is determined as the context-sensitive attribute, the reconciled resource object also includes default data that includes results of a normal reconciliation rule that is applied to the first and second instances of the resource object, the normal reconciliation rule being a reconciliation rule that is applied to a resource object that does not have a context-sensitive attribute.

13. The method of claim 9 , further comprising:
assigning a reconciliation identifier to the reconciled resource object.

14. The method of claim 9 , further comprising:
receiving a query having context information;
querying the target data partition in response to the query; and
retrieving either the first provider-specific data or the second provider-specific data from the reconciled resource object based on the context information.

15. The method of claim 9 , further comprising:
receiving a query having context information that identifies a source of provider-specific data;
querying the target data partition for the reconciled resource object in response to the query, and obtaining a common key from the reconciled resource object;
querying a first provider data partition for the first instance of the resource object using the common key when the context information specifies a first data provider, and obtaining the

Assignees

• Bmc Software Inc

Inventors

• Morozov Vitaly

Classifications

• G06F16/215 Primary

  Improving data quality; Data cleansing, e.g. de-duplication, removing invalid entries or correcting typographical errors · CPC title

• G06F16/278

  Data partitioning, e.g. horizontal or vertical partitioning · CPC title

• G06F16/24575

  using context · CPC title

• G06F16/951

  Indexing; Web crawling techniques · CPC title

• G06F17/30864

  Physics · mapped topic