US20060064666A1 - Business rules for configurable metamodels and enterprise impact analysis - Google Patents

Business rules for configurable metamodels and enterprise impact analysis Download PDF

Info

Publication number
US20060064666A1
US20060064666A1 US11/219,039 US21903905A US2006064666A1 US 20060064666 A1 US20060064666 A1 US 20060064666A1 US 21903905 A US21903905 A US 21903905A US 2006064666 A1 US2006064666 A1 US 2006064666A1
Authority
US
United States
Prior art keywords
metadata
metamodel
assets
meta
business rules
Prior art date
Legal status (The legal status is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the status listed.)
Abandoned
Application number
US11/219,039
Inventor
Ruth Amaru
Joshua Fox
Benjamin Halberstadt
Boris Melamed
Zvi Schreiber
Current Assignee (The listed assignees may be inaccurate. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation or warranty as to the accuracy of the list.)
International Business Machines Corp
Original Assignee
Unicorn Solutions Inc
Priority date (The priority date is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the date listed.)
Filing date
Publication date
Priority claimed from US09/866,101 external-priority patent/US7099885B2/en
Application filed by Unicorn Solutions Inc filed Critical Unicorn Solutions Inc
Priority to US11/219,039 priority Critical patent/US20060064666A1/en
Assigned to UNICORN SOLUTIONS, INC. reassignment UNICORN SOLUTIONS, INC. ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS). Assignors: FOX, JOSHUA, AMARU, RUTH M., SCHREIBER, ZVI, HALBERSTADT, BENJAMIN, MELAMED, BORIS
Publication of US20060064666A1 publication Critical patent/US20060064666A1/en
Assigned to 2006 TRIDENT COMPANY reassignment 2006 TRIDENT COMPANY ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS). Assignors: UNICORN SOLUTIONS, INC.
Assigned to INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION reassignment INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS). Assignors: 2006 TRIDENT COMPANY, INC.
Priority to US13/421,611 priority patent/US8548938B2/en
Abandoned legal-status Critical Current

Links

Images

Classifications

    • GPHYSICS
    • G06COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
    • G06FELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING
    • G06F16/00Information retrieval; Database structures therefor; File system structures therefor
    • G06F16/20Information retrieval; Database structures therefor; File system structures therefor of structured data, e.g. relational data
    • G06F16/25Integrating or interfacing systems involving database management systems

Definitions

  • the present invention relates to management of enterprise metadata.
  • Metadata is used to denote data about the structure of the raw data itself, and about the structures of other Information Technology (IT) systems such as applications, processes, middleware and hardware configurations.
  • IT Information Technology
  • the raw data which includes actual data about specific personnel, for example, or specific pieces of inventory, is referred to as “instance data.”
  • instance data is the actual data stored within the tables and columns.
  • the metadata describes the XML complexTypes and their XML elements, and the instance data is the actual data stored within the XML documents.
  • Each data store is referred to generically as a “data asset.”
  • Types of metadata include inter alia data schemas such as relational and XML schemas, source code, architecture models such as information models and process models, operational metadata regarding usage of applications and up-time, hardware inventories and configurations, service level agreements, and IT budgets.
  • Metamodel is used to model the entire repertoire of IT asset types.
  • asset types include inter alia relational database schemas, XML schemas, COBOL Copybook definitions, Java applications, Engage Transform and Load (ETL) middleware and the structures associated therewith.
  • a “metamodel” is a model for metadata, and describes the types of assets within the enterprise IT, and their inter-dependencies. Actual metadata itself instantiates the metamodel.
  • the three data levels within the data hierarchy are denoted by M 0 (instance data), M 1 (metadata) and M 2 (metamodel). More generally, M 0 includes instance data, messages and specific interactions; M 1 defines actual IT structures, such as specific schemas, interfaces and inter-dependencies; and M 2 describes types of structures and cross-references of IT.
  • a system In order to enable efficient use of a rich and configurable metamodel, a system is needed that supports (i) metamodel editing; (ii) classes, properties, inheritance and multiple inheritance within a metamodel; and (iii) industry standards such as Meta-Object Facility (MOFTM) for structure of the metamodel, XML Interchange (XMITM) for import and export of metadata, and standard metamodels such as the Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWMTM) and the DMTF Common Information Model (CIMTM).
  • MOFTM, XMI and CWMTM are standards developed by the Object Modeling Group (OMG®); and CIM is a standard developed by Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTFTM).
  • metamodels such as MOF-compliant metamodels, which flexibly define the structure of metadata
  • metamodels have not been used to describe specific rules which metadata must obey. Therefore, metamodels have hitherto had limited use in the detailed governance of IT.
  • the present invention concerns a method and system for metadata management.
  • the present invention supports (i) a rich and configurable metamodel with run-time metamodel editing; (ii) multiple inheritance and the addition of business rules within a metamodel; (iii) industry standards such as MOFTM, XMITM, CWMTM and CIMTM.
  • the metamodel of the present invention supports an endless number of types of metadata, including inter alia metadata for data assets, business applications, organization charts, process models, hardware configurations and network topographies; and (iv) mapping between incompatible metamodels to enable import, export, synchronization and federation of metadata.
  • a metadata management system for importing, integrating and federating meta-data, including a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, a metadata repository for storing metadata whose structure reflects the metamodel, at least one external metadata source, which is able to persist metadata in accordance with the structure of a meta-schema, a mapping module for mapping the meta-schema to the metamodel, and a transformation module, operatively coupled to the metadata mapping module, for translating specific metadata from the external metadata source to the metadata repository, for use in import, export or synchronization of metadata between the at least one external metadata source and the metadata repository.
  • a metadata management system for validating metadata including a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, business rules on the metamodel, and a metadata validation module operating on said configurable metamodel for validating specific metadata against the metamodel business rules.
  • a metadata management system for generating metadata including a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, business rules on the metamodel, and a metadata generation module operating on said configurable metamodel for guiding the generation of specific metadata using the metamodel business rules.
  • a metadata management system for managing an IT organization including a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, business rules on the metamodel, and a validation module operating on said configurable metamodel for validating rules for IT governance against the metamodel business rules.
  • a method for importing, integrating and federating metadata including providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, (ii) a metadata repository for storing metadata whose structure reflects the metamodel, and (iii) at least one external metadata source, which is able to persist metadata in accordance with the structure of a meta-schema, mapping the meta-schema to the metamodel, and translating specific metadata from the at least one external metadata source to the metadata repository for use in import, export or synchronization of metadata between the external metadata source and the metadata repository.
  • a method for validating metadata including providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, and (ii) business rules on the metamodel, and validating specific metadata against the metamodel business rules.
  • a method for generating metadata including providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, and (ii) business rules on the metamodel, and guiding the generation of specific metadata using the metamodel business rules.
  • a method for managing an IT organization including providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, and (ii) business rules on the metamodel, and validating rules for IT governance against the metamodel business rules.
  • a computer-readable storage medium storing program code for causing a computer to perform the steps of providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, (ii) a metadata repository for storing metadata whose structure reflects the metamodel, and (iii) at least one external metadata source, which is able to persist metadata in accordance with the structure of a meta-schema, mapping the meta-schema to the metamodel, and translating specific metadata from the at least one external metadata source to the metadata repository for use in import, export or synchronization of metadata between the external metadata source and the metadata repository.
  • a computer-readable storage medium storing program code for causing a computer to perform the steps of providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, and (ii) business rules on the metamodel, and validating specific metadata against the metamodel business rules.
  • a computer-readable storage medium storing program code for causing a computer to perform the steps of providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, and (ii) business rules on the metamodel, and guiding the generation of specific metadata using the metamodel business rules.
  • a computer-readable storage medium storing program code for causing a computer to perform the steps of providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, and (ii) business rules on the metamodel, and validating responsibility assignments against the metamodel business rules.
  • a metadata management system for performing impact analysis on an IT system comprising a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes assets of an enterprise IT system, the metamodel including meta-classes and meta-properties, business rules on the metamodel for indicating that certain meta-properties have impact consequences, and an impact analyzer operating on the configurable metamodel for determining which assets of the enterprise IT system are impacted by one or more specified assets.
  • a method for generating metadata comprising providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes assets of an enterprise IT system, the metamodel including meta-classes and meta-properties, and (ii) business rules on said metamodel for indicating that certain meta-properties have impact consequences, and determining which assets of the enterprise IT system are impacted by one or more specified assets.
  • a computer-readable storage medium storing program code for causing a computer to perform the steps of providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes assets of an enterprise IT system, the metamodel including meta-classes and meta-properties, and (ii) business rules on said metamodel for indicating that certain meta-properties have impact consequences, and determining which assets of the enterprise IT system are impacted by one or more specified assets.
  • a metadata management system for performing impact analysis on an IT system including a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes assets of an enterprise IT system, the metamodel including meta-classes and meta-properties, a meta-descriptor for meta-properties to designate that a meta-property has an impact consequence, and an impact analyzer operating on said configurable metamodel for determining which assets of the enterprise IT system are impacted by one or more specified assets.
  • a method for generating metadata including providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes assets of an enterprise IT system, the metamodel including meta-classes and meta-properties, and (ii) a meta-descriptor for meta-properties to designate that a meta-property has an impact consequence, and determining which assets of the enterprise IT system are impacted by one or more specified assets.
  • a computer-readable storage medium storing program code for causing a computer to perform the steps of providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes assets of an enterprise IT system, the metamodel including meta-classes and meta-properties, and (ii) a meta-descriptor for meta-properties to designate that a meta-property has an impact consequence, and determining which assets of the enterprise IT system are impacted by one or more specified assets.
  • FIG. 1 is a simplified illustration of an Object Management Group hierarchy including instance data, metadata and a metamodel, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention
  • FIG. 2 illustrates a metamodel wherein a meta-class RDBSchema is associated with a databaseAdministrator of type Person, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention
  • FIG. 3 illustrates a business rule requiring that every relational database must have a database Administrator, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention
  • FIG. 4 illustrates a business rule wherein the name of a Cobol Copybook definition may be generated based on a naming standard from other meta-properties of a Cobol Copybook, such as ApplicationName, DivisionName, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention
  • FIG. 5 is a simplified block diagram of a metadata management system for importing metadata, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention
  • FIG. 6 is a simplified block diagram of a system for validating metadata, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention.
  • FIG. 7 is a simplified block diagram of a system for automatically guiding the generation of metadata so as to ensure that the metadata is compliant with business rules of a metamodel, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention
  • FIG. 8 is an illustration of a dialogue box for creating an impact analysis (IA) meta-class, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention.
  • FIG. 9 is an illustration of a dialogue box that continues the workflow from FIG. 8 , for designating properties as being germane to a particular impact analysis, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention.
  • FIG. 10 is an illustration of stepwise graphical navigation of a meta-model, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention.
  • FIG. 11 is an illustration of a graphic display of the transitive closure of impacted notes, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention.
  • FIG. 12 is an illustration of a graphical user interface for viewing data lineage results arranged along a “data flow axis” and a “system composition axis”, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention.
  • FIG. 13 is an illustration of a graphical user interface for marking meta-properties as being Downstream Items, Upstream Items, subunits or superUnits, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention.
  • the present invention is preferably embodied within at least one server computer used to store configurable information about enterprise data assets in the form of a metamodel and metadata conforming to the metamodel; and within a plurality of client computers used to generate and edit metadata, and to query the metadata.
  • the present invention enables an enterprise to understand the structure of all of its data assets and other IT assets, even when metadata information on the structures comes from many sources in different formats.
  • the present invention uses rules to impose restrictions on allowed metadata values and hence on the types of structures which may appear in the IT environment.
  • FIG. 1 is a simplified illustration of an Object Management Group hierarchy including instance data, metadata and a metamodel, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention.
  • a metamodel referred to as an M 2
  • M 2 is used to define the structural elements of a data schema.
  • the M 2 illustrated in FIG. 1 describes the elements of a relational database schema.
  • a relational database schema 105 includes elements 110 referred to as “tables,” and in turn tables includes elements 115 referred to as “columns.”
  • a relational database 105 , a table 110 and a column 115 each have a text identifier referred to as its “name.”
  • Metadata for a data schema is used to define a specific data schema conforming to the metamodel.
  • the M 1 metadata specifies a relational database 120 named “Customer Database.”
  • the customer database has a table 125 named “Address” and a table 130 named “State.”
  • the Address table has a column 135 named “Street Line” and a column 140 named “Zip Code;” and the State table has a column 145 named “Postal Code” and a column 150 named “Name.”
  • Specific instance data 155 conforming to the Customer Database referred to as M 0
  • M 0 Specific instance data 155 conforming to the Customer Database
  • M 1 corresponds to instance data for an M 2 .
  • Metamodels and metadata may be specified using the Meta-Object Facility (MOFTM) specification, developed by Object Management Group, Inc. (OMG®) of Needham, Mass.
  • MOFTM Meta-Object Facility
  • OOG® Object Management Group, Inc.
  • metamodels are represented in terms of an ontology having classes and properties, such as ontologies based on the W3C Web Ontology Language (OWL) standard, as described in applicant's co-pending application U.S. Ser. No. 10/053,045, filed on Jan. 15, 2002, entitled “Method and System for Deriving a Transformation by Referring Schema to an Central Model,” the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference.
  • OWL Web Ontology Language
  • classes and properties within an M 2 metamodel are referred to herein as meta-classes and meta-properties, respectively.
  • meta-classes and meta-properties are class types and property types, respectively.
  • specific relational database tables such as Address and State are of type Table; i.e., they are instance classes of a meta-class Table.
  • metamodel M 2 includes business rules, which relate various meta-properties. Examples of such business rules are described hereinbelow with reference to FIGS. 3 and 4 .
  • FIG. 2 illustrates a metamodel wherein a meta-class RDBSchema 210 is associated with a databaseAdministrator 220 of type Person 230 , in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention.
  • FIG. 3 illustrates a business rule requiring that every relational database 310 must have a meta-property databaseAdministrator 320 of type Person 330 , in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention.
  • the business rule is set in FIG. 3 by marking the meta-property as Required 340 .
  • the cardinality 250 of meta-property databaseAdministrator is [1 . . . 1], indicating that the minimum 350 and maximum 360 number of databaseAdministrators per RDBSchema is 1.
  • an integrity checker 240 preferably lists all violations of business rules. Thus, if a databaseAdministrator is not defined for an RDBSchema, then integrity checker 240 will flag this as a violation of the business rule shown in FIG. 3 .
  • FIG. 4 illustrates a business rule wherein the name of a Cobol Copybook definition may be generated based on a naming standard from other meta-properties of a Cobol Copybook, such as ApplicationName and DivisionName, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention.
  • business rule 410 shown in FIG. 4 requires that the meta-property name 420 for the meta-class CobolCopybook 430 be the concatenation of the three strings ApplicationName 440 , DivisionName 450 and FirstDataArchitectAssignedtothisAsset 460 .
  • business rule 410 may be used to automatically generate the name for a CobolCopybook.
  • Examples of business rules that may be used with the present invention include inter alia:
  • Business rules may also be used, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention, for type restrictions on indirect properties.
  • the indirect meta-property C1.P1.P2 should be restricted to be of type S3, which is a sub-class of C3, but that C2.P2 is not to be restricted to S3.
  • a new meta-class, S2, corresponding to C1.P1 is defined as a sub-class of C2, and a business rule is used to restrict the type of S2.P2 to S3.
  • a business rule is used to restrict the type of S2.P2 to S3.
  • FIGS. 5-7 illustrate three different applications of the present invention in the area of enterprise metadata management.
  • FIG. 5 is a simplified block diagram of a metadata management system for importing metadata, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention.
  • FIG. 5 illustrates a metamodel of an enterprise, such as the metamodel illustrated in FIGS. 2 and 4 , including meta-classes and sub-classes for business applications and data assets.
  • the class DataAsset includes inter alia sub-classes CobolCopybook, ErwinSchema, RDBSchema, XMISchema and XSDSchema.
  • FIG. 2 displays meta-properties for the RDBSchema meta-class
  • FIG. 4 displays metadata for the CobolCopybook meta-class.
  • FIG. 5 Shown in FIG. 5 are a configurable metamodel 510 , and a repository 520 of metadata that conforms to metamodel 510 . Also shown in FIG. 5 are an external meta-schema 530 and a repository 540 of metadata that conforms to meta-schema 530 . Since the metadata in repository 540 conforms to a different meta-schema than the metadata in repository 520 , the metadata in repository 540 cannot readily be imported into repository 520 .
  • the metadata in repository 540 may be metadata for XML schemas
  • the metadata in repository 520 may be metadata for relational database schemas.
  • mapping module 550 is used to generate a mapping 560 between the meta-schema 530 and the metamodel 510 .
  • Generation of mappings between schemas is described in applicant's aforementioned co-pending patent application U.S. Ser. No. 10/053,045.
  • mapping 560 may associate XML Schema Metamodel XML complexType --> class XML element --> property
  • mapping 560 When mapping 560 is generated, a metadata transformation module 570 uses mapping 560 to derive a data transformation for transforming metadata from repository 540 to metadata that conforms to metamodel 510 . Upon transformation, the metadata in repository 540 can then be directly imported into repository 520 . Derivation of transformations is also described in applicant's aforementioned co-pending patent application U.S. Ser. No. 10/053,045.
  • XMI Metadata Interchange
  • the data transformation derived by transformation module 570 may be an XSLT script.
  • OMG® Object Management Group
  • W3C® World-Wide Web Consortium
  • M 1 metadata can be considered as instance data for an M 2 metamodel.
  • mapping module 550 and the same transformation module 570 from FIG. 5 may also be used to map a first set of M 1 metadata to a second set of M 1 metadata, and to transform M 0 instance data conforming to the first set of metadata to M 0 instance data conforming to the second set of metadata.
  • This allows the same tools and skills to be used for mapping metadata and transforming instance data, as is used for mapping metamodels/meta-schemas and transforming metadata.
  • FIG. 6 is a simplified block diagram of a system for validating metadata, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention. Shown in FIG. 6 are a configurable metamodel 610 and a repository 620 of metadata conforming to metamodel 610 .
  • Metamodel 610 includes one or more business rules 630 , that relate meta-properties within metamodel 610 , such as the business rules illustrated in FIGS. 3 and 4 .
  • validation module 640 which is preferably activated by a integrity checker control such as button 240 ( FIG. 2 ).
  • validation module 640 verifies each of the business rules 630 against the metadata in repository 620 , and produces a list of violations. It may be appreciated that violations of metadata rules may correspond to violations of IT policy by the actual systems that the metadata reflects.
  • metadata repository 620 may be metadata for an IT organization, and the business rules may define valid responsibility assignments.
  • validation module 640 is used to validate responsibility assignments.
  • FIG. 7 is a simplified block diagram of a system for automatically guiding the generation of metadata so as to ensure that the metadata is compliant with business rules of a metamodel, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention.
  • the generation of metadata may be motivated by the desire to reduce the manual effort required in populating the metadata.
  • Shown in FIG. 7 are a metamodel 710 and a repository 720 of metadata conforming to metamodel 720 .
  • Metamodel 710 includes one or more business rules 730 .
  • a metadata guide 740 which automatically guides a user who is generating metadata, so that the metadata complies with business rules 730 .
  • metadata guide 740 automatically ensures that each RDBSchema has a databaseAdministrator defined.
  • metadata guide 740 automatically generates names of Cobol Copybooks, so that the name of a Copybook is a concatenation of an ApplicationName, a DivisionName and a FirstDataArchitectAssignedtothisAsset name.
  • the present invention has important application to impact analysis; namely, analyzing the impact of one or more IT assets on the rest of the IT infrastructure—i.e., determining, if one or more IT assets are shut down or modified, which other assets are impacted and how.
  • Impact analysis is critical for routine system maintenance, system upgrade or modification, and for disaster recovery. Examples of impact analysis include inter alia:
  • a binary relation such as “impacts” and its inverse binary relation “is impacted by” are imposed on meta-classes. These relations model the dependencies whereby one class may impact or may be impacted by another class, respectively.
  • appropriate meta-properties within the metamodel are characterized by “impacts” or “is impacted by”, and the binary relations then correspond to the transitive closure of these characterizations.
  • the characterization of meta-properties as “impacts” or “is impacted by” is accomplished through a business rule referred to as an “Inclusion BR” and a property referred to as “impacts”.
  • the Inclusion BR indicates that a first property P1 is included in a second property P2, where the domain of P1 is a sub-class of the domain of P2; namely, that whenever instance I is related to instance J via property P1, then instance I is also related to instance I via property P2. It may be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the Inclusion BR for P1 being included in P2 corresponds to P1 being a sub-property of P2.
  • the property “impacts” is preferably defined on a super-meta-class of the metamodel, such as a meta-class “Being” which is a super-meta-class of all meta-classes within the metamodel.
  • a meta-class “Being” which is a super-meta-class of all meta-classes within the metamodel.
  • the Inclusion BR may specify that the two meta-properties “hasRunningApplications” (Server-->Application) and “hasRunningDBs” (Server-->Database) are impact meta-properties; i.e., included within the meta-property “impacts”. Thereafter an impact analysis on a specific server will produce all applications that run on the server and all databases that are hosted by the server.
  • the Inclusion BR may specify that the two meta-properties “is FeedingInto” (Application-->RDBTable) and “is CreatingXML” (Application-->XMLDocument) are impact properties. Combining these by transitivity, a specific server may impact various relational database tables and various XML documents.
  • FIG. 8 is an illustration of a dialogue box for creating an impact analysis (IA) meta-class, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention. As shown in FIG.
  • DowntimeImpactItem a meta-class named “DowntimeImpactItem” 810 is created, together with meta-properties “directDowntimeVictims” 820 and “allDowntimeVictims” 830 , the former property corresponding to direct dependencies and the latter property corresponding to both direct and indirect dependencies.
  • Downtime Impact Analysis a meta-class named “Downtime Impact Analysis” 840 , which is used to perform an impact analysis vis a vis downtime impacts.
  • the meta-class “DowntimeImpactItem” serves as a superclass for all meta-classes whose instances can participate in the analysis.
  • ComputingDevice is a meta-class that should participate in downtime impact analysis, then it should be designated as a sub-class of DowntimeImpactItem and, as such, it inherits the properties directDowntimeVictims and allDowntimeVictims.
  • Instances of sub-classes of meta-class ComputingDevice such as instances of a class ServerComputer, of a class GatewayComputer and of a class ClientComputer, will then all participate in downtime impact analysis.
  • Any meta-class that inherits from DowntimeImpactItem can be included within a downtime impact analysis. Similarly, if a meta-class inherits from multiple meta-classes, each super-class being a specific impact analysis type, then instances of the meta-class participate in each of the specific impact analyses.
  • an IA type of entity is preferably represented by a meta-class that has a property such as inter alia “impacts”, “affects” or “hasConsequencesFor”.
  • the name of the meta-class preferably reflects the role of an instance class of its IA type, such as inter alia “DownTimeImpactItem” or “ProcurementImpactItem”.
  • FIG. 9 is an illustration of a dialogue box that continues the workflow from FIG. 8 , for designating properties as being germane to a particular impact analysis, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention.
  • Shown in the left panel of FIG. 9 is a meta-class “DowntimeImpactItem” 905 , as defined in the dialogue box of FIG. 8 , from which meta-classes “Application” 910 and “Server” 915 inherit, by virtue of being sub-classes thereof.
  • FIG. 9 are various properties of the meta-class Server, such as “ApplicationID” 920 , “Applications” 925 , “CPU” 930 and the inherited property directDowntimeVictims 935 , as also defined in the dialogue box of FIG. 8 .
  • a business rule assigns the meta-property “Applications” 940 to Downtime Impact Analysis 945 .
  • a user merely selects the Applications meta-property 925 from the list of Server meta-properties, and then clicks on the Add button 950 .
  • Such a business rule indicates that instance classes of Applications are impacted when corresponding instance classes of Server go down.
  • applications running on server computers will be included in the analysis. It may thus be appreciated by those skilled in the art that impact analyses are conveniently defined via business rules of a meta-model.
  • meta-classes C1 and C2 are automatically designated as sub-classes of the appropriate IA meta-class, such as DowntimeImpactItem.
  • IA meta-classes are direct sub-classes of meta-class “Analyzable” 955 .
  • FIG. 10 is an illustration of stepwise graphical navigation of a meta-model, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention.
  • the screen shown in FIG. 10 enables a user to explore each node in a metamodel in a controlled way. By clicking on a “plus” sign for a node A, a user instructs the navigator to display all nodes that node A has an impact relation therewith, together with arrows that are labeled in accordance with the underlying meta-properties.
  • FIG. 10 Shown in FIG. 10 is a computer server 1010 which runs applications 1020 and 1030 , and hosts a web site 1040 .
  • application 1020 writes to a data source 1050
  • application 1030 writes to a data source 1060 .
  • data source 1050 is used by web sites 1070 and 1080
  • data source 1060 is used in transformation 1090 .
  • All of the indicated properties are preferably included within an “impacts” property and, as such, server 1010 directly impacts the three IT assets 1020 , 1030 and 1040 , and indirectly impacts the five IT assets 1050 , 1060 , 1070 , 1080 and 1090 . It may thus be appreciated that using the present invention, an IT administrator is able to determine the impact of shutting down server 1010 or application 1020 , for example.
  • FIG. 11 is an illustration of a graphic display of the transitive closure of impacted nodes, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention. Shown in FIG. 11 is a list of classes impacted by a class “Cordoba15” 1105 , which is an instance of a meta-class “Computer”.
  • the list includes a class “Market Report” 1110 and a class “Market Watch (Premium)” 1115 , which are instances of a meta-class “Web Site” 1120 , a class “WebSphere Business Integration Event Broker 5.0” 1125 and a class “Active Reference” 1130 which are instances of a meta-class “Application Version” 1135 , a class “FRX-SAKO” 1140 and a class “Market Stage” 1145 , which are instances of a meta-class “Data Source” 1150 , and a class “PBDEC to AMCS” 1155 , which is an instance of a meta-class “Transformation” 1160 .
  • the list includes classes that are directly and indirectly impacted by Cordoba15.
  • the chain of impact dependencies is displayed below.
  • the graphic display in FIG. 11 shows the dependency chain 1165 from Cordoba15 to Market Watch (Premium).
  • Each of the arrows 1170 , 1175 and 1180 correspond to a direct impact dependency.
  • binary relations “impacts” and “is impacted by” may correspond to relations other than the transitive closure of “impacts” and “is impacted by” characterizations. For example, they may correspond to a transitive closure up to a specified number of levels, so that indirect impact is restricted to, say, three levels.
  • property inclusion may alternatively be implemented using descriptors to tag certain meta-properties as being impact-related.
  • implementation using an Inclusion BR allows more generality, including (i) allowing different types of impact or be distinguished, and (ii) allowing inference to take advantage of the “impacts” property.
  • a somewhat similar application to impact analysis is data lineage, which is a technique for finding sources of property values. For example, a user may want to know “for a property “productName”, which is part of an Entity “Product Parameters”, which is part of a Data Asset “ProductSearchUI” where does its value come from?”
  • data lineage is described as if it were a four-way impact analysis, using two axes.
  • a first axis the “data flow axis”, indicates the flow of data using a property “Downstream Items” and a corresponding inverse property “Upstream Items”.
  • a second axis, the “system composition axis”, indicates system components using a property “subUnits” and a corresponding inverse property “superUnits.”
  • FIG. 12 is an illustration of a graphical user interface for viewing data lineage results arranged along the two above axes, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention. The results illustrated in FIG. 12 are evoked when a user selects the productName property and invokes data lineage analysis.
  • the horizontal arrows depict the data flow axis and the vertical arrows depict the system composition axis.
  • productName 1210 is an attribute of a GenericEntity “Product Parameters” 1230
  • Product Parameters 1230 is an asset from a DataAsset “ProductSearchUI” 1230
  • productName 1210 is assigned a value based on a corresponding property “productName” 1240 of class “WsdlValuePart”.
  • productName 1240 is part of a message “product Search Response” 1250
  • productName 1240 is assigned a value from a Column “longName” 1260 of a relational database table “prod” 1270 .
  • FIG. 13 is an illustration of a graphical user interface for marking meta-properties as being Downstream Items, Upstream Items, subunits or superUnits, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention.
  • a meta-property “copiedFrom” 1310 is designated as being included in Upstream Items 1320
  • its inverse meta-property, “copiedTo” 1330 is included in Downstream Items 1340 .
  • copiedFrom” and “copiedTo” are meta-properties from meta-class WsdlValuePart to meta-class ValueElement.

Abstract

A metadata management system for importing, integrating and federating metadata, including a configurable metamodel, a metadata repository for storing metadata whose structure reflects the metamodel, at least one external metadata source, which is able to persist metadata in accordance with the structure of a meta-schema, a mapping module for mapping the meta-schema to the metamodel, and a transformation module, operatively coupled to the metadata mapping module, for translating specific metadata from the at least one external metadata source to the metadata repository, for use in import, export or synchronization of metadata between the external metadata source and the metadata repository. A method and a computer-readable storage medium are also described.

Description

    CROSS REFERENCES TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
  • This application is a continuation-in-part of assignee's pending application U.S. Ser. No. 10/053,045, filed on Jan. 15, 2002, entitled “Method and System for Deriving a Transformation by Referring Schema to an Central Model,” which is a continuation-in-part of assignee's pending application U.S. Ser. No. 09/866,101, filed on May 25, 2001, entitled “Method and System for Collaborative Ontology Modeling.”
  • FIELD OF THE INVENTION
  • The present invention relates to management of enterprise metadata.
  • BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
  • Large enterprises rely on vast amounts and diverse types of data for their operation—personnel data, financial data, accounting data, inventory data, capital equipment data, document management data, and more. Today, data is generally stored according to data structures referred to as a data schemas, such as XML and relational database schemas, these being a form of metadata. The term “metadata” is used to denote data about the structure of the raw data itself, and about the structures of other Information Technology (IT) systems such as applications, processes, middleware and hardware configurations. The raw data, which includes actual data about specific personnel, for example, or specific pieces of inventory, is referred to as “instance data.” Thus, for a data store having the structure of a relational database, the metadata describes the tables and their columns to be populated with data, and the raw data, referred to as instance data, is the actual data stored within the tables and columns. Similarly, for a data store of XML documents, the metadata describes the XML complexTypes and their XML elements, and the instance data is the actual data stored within the XML documents. Each data store is referred to generically as a “data asset.”
  • Types of metadata include inter alia data schemas such as relational and XML schemas, source code, architecture models such as information models and process models, operational metadata regarding usage of applications and up-time, hardware inventories and configurations, service level agreements, and IT budgets.
  • It is common for large enterprises to have thousands of different data assets, each with a unique schema; i.e., thousands of different metadata descriptions, within their IT. For example, financial data may be spread out over several different relational databases, personnel data may be spread out over several different XML document stores, and inventory data may be spread out according to several different Cobol Copybook definitions.
  • In order to describe all of the different types of enterprise IT assets, including inter alia data assets and applications, a metamodel is used to model the entire repertoire of IT asset types. Such asset types include inter alia relational database schemas, XML schemas, COBOL Copybook definitions, Java applications, Engage Transform and Load (ETL) middleware and the structures associated therewith. A “metamodel” is a model for metadata, and describes the types of assets within the enterprise IT, and their inter-dependencies. Actual metadata itself instantiates the metamodel.
  • The three levels of data—instance data, metadata and metamodel, form a data hierarchy, wherein the structure of each level of data is described by the level above it. The three data levels within the data hierarchy are denoted by M0 (instance data), M1 (metadata) and M2 (metamodel). More generally, M0 includes instance data, messages and specific interactions; M1 defines actual IT structures, such as specific schemas, interfaces and inter-dependencies; and M2 describes types of structures and cross-references of IT.
  • In order to enable efficient use of a rich and configurable metamodel, a system is needed that supports (i) metamodel editing; (ii) classes, properties, inheritance and multiple inheritance within a metamodel; and (iii) industry standards such as Meta-Object Facility (MOF™) for structure of the metamodel, XML Interchange (XMI™) for import and export of metadata, and standard metamodels such as the Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM™) and the DMTF Common Information Model (CIM™). MOF™, XMI and CWM™ are standards developed by the Object Modeling Group (OMG®); and CIM is a standard developed by Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTF™).
  • While the prior art includes flexible metamodels such as MOF-compliant metamodels, which flexibly define the structure of metadata, metamodels have not been used to describe specific rules which metadata must obey. Therefore, metamodels have hitherto had limited use in the detailed governance of IT.
  • Furthermore, although there are standard languages such as MOF for specifying metamodels, in reality sources of metadata currently have their own metamodels, making it difficult to accumulate metadata from different sources into one overall metadata model of enterprise IT.
  • SUMMARY OF THE DESCRIPTION
  • The present invention concerns a method and system for metadata management. The present invention supports (i) a rich and configurable metamodel with run-time metamodel editing; (ii) multiple inheritance and the addition of business rules within a metamodel; (iii) industry standards such as MOF™, XMI™, CWM™ and CIM™. The metamodel of the present invention supports an endless number of types of metadata, including inter alia metadata for data assets, business applications, organization charts, process models, hardware configurations and network topographies; and (iv) mapping between incompatible metamodels to enable import, export, synchronization and federation of metadata.
  • There is thus provided in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention a metadata management system for importing, integrating and federating meta-data, including a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, a metadata repository for storing metadata whose structure reflects the metamodel, at least one external metadata source, which is able to persist metadata in accordance with the structure of a meta-schema, a mapping module for mapping the meta-schema to the metamodel, and a transformation module, operatively coupled to the metadata mapping module, for translating specific metadata from the external metadata source to the metadata repository, for use in import, export or synchronization of metadata between the at least one external metadata source and the metadata repository.
  • There is further provided in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention a metadata management system for validating metadata, including a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, business rules on the metamodel, and a metadata validation module operating on said configurable metamodel for validating specific metadata against the metamodel business rules.
  • There is yet further provided in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention a metadata management system for generating metadata including a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, business rules on the metamodel, and a metadata generation module operating on said configurable metamodel for guiding the generation of specific metadata using the metamodel business rules.
  • There is moreover provided in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention a metadata management system for managing an IT organization, including a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, business rules on the metamodel, and a validation module operating on said configurable metamodel for validating rules for IT governance against the metamodel business rules.
  • There is additionally provided in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention a method for importing, integrating and federating metadata, including providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, (ii) a metadata repository for storing metadata whose structure reflects the metamodel, and (iii) at least one external metadata source, which is able to persist metadata in accordance with the structure of a meta-schema, mapping the meta-schema to the metamodel, and translating specific metadata from the at least one external metadata source to the metadata repository for use in import, export or synchronization of metadata between the external metadata source and the metadata repository.
  • There is further provided in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention a method for validating metadata, including providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, and (ii) business rules on the metamodel, and validating specific metadata against the metamodel business rules.
  • There is yet further provided in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention a method for generating metadata including providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, and (ii) business rules on the metamodel, and guiding the generation of specific metadata using the metamodel business rules.
  • There is moreover provided in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention a method for managing an IT organization, including providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, and (ii) business rules on the metamodel, and validating rules for IT governance against the metamodel business rules.
  • There is additionally provided in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention a computer-readable storage medium storing program code for causing a computer to perform the steps of providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, (ii) a metadata repository for storing metadata whose structure reflects the metamodel, and (iii) at least one external metadata source, which is able to persist metadata in accordance with the structure of a meta-schema, mapping the meta-schema to the metamodel, and translating specific metadata from the at least one external metadata source to the metadata repository for use in import, export or synchronization of metadata between the external metadata source and the metadata repository.
  • There is further provided in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention a computer-readable storage medium storing program code for causing a computer to perform the steps of providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, and (ii) business rules on the metamodel, and validating specific metadata against the metamodel business rules.
  • There is yet further provided in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention a computer-readable storage medium storing program code for causing a computer to perform the steps of providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, and (ii) business rules on the metamodel, and guiding the generation of specific metadata using the metamodel business rules.
  • There is moreover provided in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention a computer-readable storage medium storing program code for causing a computer to perform the steps of providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, and (ii) business rules on the metamodel, and validating responsibility assignments against the metamodel business rules.
  • There is additionally provided in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention a metadata management system for performing impact analysis on an IT system comprising a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes assets of an enterprise IT system, the metamodel including meta-classes and meta-properties, business rules on the metamodel for indicating that certain meta-properties have impact consequences, and an impact analyzer operating on the configurable metamodel for determining which assets of the enterprise IT system are impacted by one or more specified assets.
  • There is further provided in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention A method for generating metadata comprising providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes assets of an enterprise IT system, the metamodel including meta-classes and meta-properties, and (ii) business rules on said metamodel for indicating that certain meta-properties have impact consequences, and determining which assets of the enterprise IT system are impacted by one or more specified assets.
  • There is yet further provided in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention a computer-readable storage medium storing program code for causing a computer to perform the steps of providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes assets of an enterprise IT system, the metamodel including meta-classes and meta-properties, and (ii) business rules on said metamodel for indicating that certain meta-properties have impact consequences, and determining which assets of the enterprise IT system are impacted by one or more specified assets.
  • There is moreover provided in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention a metadata management system for performing impact analysis on an IT system including a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes assets of an enterprise IT system, the metamodel including meta-classes and meta-properties, a meta-descriptor for meta-properties to designate that a meta-property has an impact consequence, and an impact analyzer operating on said configurable metamodel for determining which assets of the enterprise IT system are impacted by one or more specified assets.
  • There is additionally provided in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention a method for generating metadata including providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes assets of an enterprise IT system, the metamodel including meta-classes and meta-properties, and (ii) a meta-descriptor for meta-properties to designate that a meta-property has an impact consequence, and determining which assets of the enterprise IT system are impacted by one or more specified assets.
  • There is further provided in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention a computer-readable storage medium storing program code for causing a computer to perform the steps of providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes assets of an enterprise IT system, the metamodel including meta-classes and meta-properties, and (ii) a meta-descriptor for meta-properties to designate that a meta-property has an impact consequence, and determining which assets of the enterprise IT system are impacted by one or more specified assets.
  • BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
  • The present invention will be more fully understood and appreciated from the following detailed description, taken in conjunction with the drawings in which:
  • FIG. 1 is a simplified illustration of an Object Management Group hierarchy including instance data, metadata and a metamodel, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention;
  • FIG. 2 illustrates a metamodel wherein a meta-class RDBSchema is associated with a databaseAdministrator of type Person, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention;
  • FIG. 3 illustrates a business rule requiring that every relational database must have a database Administrator, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention;
  • FIG. 4 illustrates a business rule wherein the name of a Cobol Copybook definition may be generated based on a naming standard from other meta-properties of a Cobol Copybook, such as ApplicationName, DivisionName, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention;
  • FIG. 5 is a simplified block diagram of a metadata management system for importing metadata, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention;
  • FIG. 6 is a simplified block diagram of a system for validating metadata, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention; and
  • FIG. 7 is a simplified block diagram of a system for automatically guiding the generation of metadata so as to ensure that the metadata is compliant with business rules of a metamodel, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention;
  • FIG. 8 is an illustration of a dialogue box for creating an impact analysis (IA) meta-class, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention;
  • FIG. 9 is an illustration of a dialogue box that continues the workflow from FIG. 8, for designating properties as being germane to a particular impact analysis, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention;
  • FIG. 10 is an illustration of stepwise graphical navigation of a meta-model, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention;
  • FIG. 11 is an illustration of a graphic display of the transitive closure of impacted notes, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention;
  • FIG. 12 is an illustration of a graphical user interface for viewing data lineage results arranged along a “data flow axis” and a “system composition axis”, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention; and
  • FIG. 13 is an illustration of a graphical user interface for marking meta-properties as being Downstream Items, Upstream Items, subunits or superUnits, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention.
  • DETAILED DESCRIPTION
  • The present invention is preferably embodied within at least one server computer used to store configurable information about enterprise data assets in the form of a metamodel and metadata conforming to the metamodel; and within a plurality of client computers used to generate and edit metadata, and to query the metadata. The present invention enables an enterprise to understand the structure of all of its data assets and other IT assets, even when metadata information on the structures comes from many sources in different formats. The present invention uses rules to impose restrictions on allowed metadata values and hence on the types of structures which may appear in the IT environment.
  • Reference is now made to FIG. 1, which is a simplified illustration of an Object Management Group hierarchy including instance data, metadata and a metamodel, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention. A metamodel, referred to as an M2, is used to define the structural elements of a data schema. For example, the M2 illustrated in FIG. 1 describes the elements of a relational database schema. As shown, a relational database schema 105 includes elements 110 referred to as “tables,” and in turn tables includes elements 115 referred to as “columns.” A relational database 105, a table 110 and a column 115 each have a text identifier referred to as its “name.”
  • Metadata for a data schema, referred to as an M1, is used to define a specific data schema conforming to the metamodel. As shown in FIG. 1, the M1 metadata specifies a relational database 120 named “Customer Database.” The customer database has a table 125 named “Address” and a table 130 named “State.” In turn the Address table has a column 135 named “Street Line” and a column 140 named “Zip Code;” and the State table has a column 145 named “Postal Code” and a column 150 named “Name.”
  • Specific instance data 155 conforming to the Customer Database, referred to as M0, is illustrated at the bottom of the hierarchy of FIG. 1. It may be appreciated that, just as M0 corresponds to instance data for an M1, in the same manner M1 corresponds to instance data for an M2.
  • Metamodels and metadata may be specified using the Meta-Object Facility (MOF™) specification, developed by Object Management Group, Inc. (OMG®) of Needham, Mass.
  • Preferably, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention, metamodels are represented in terms of an ontology having classes and properties, such as ontologies based on the W3C Web Ontology Language (OWL) standard, as described in applicant's co-pending application U.S. Ser. No. 10/053,045, filed on Jan. 15, 2002, entitled “Method and System for Deriving a Transformation by Referring Schema to an Central Model,” the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference. In order to distinguish between M1 metadata and M2 metamodels, classes and properties within an M2 metamodel are referred to herein as meta-classes and meta-properties, respectively. In working with metamodels, it is often useful to consider meta-classes and meta-properties as being class types and property types, respectively. For example, specific relational database tables such as Address and State are of type Table; i.e., they are instance classes of a meta-class Table.
  • Preferably, metamodel M2 includes business rules, which relate various meta-properties. Examples of such business rules are described hereinbelow with reference to FIGS. 3 and 4.
  • Reference is now made to FIG. 2, which illustrates a metamodel wherein a meta-class RDBSchema 210 is associated with a databaseAdministrator 220 of type Person 230, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention.
  • Reference is now made to FIG. 3, which illustrates a business rule requiring that every relational database 310 must have a meta-property databaseAdministrator 320 of type Person 330, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention. The business rule is set in FIG. 3 by marking the meta-property as Required 340. The cardinality 250 of meta-property databaseAdministrator is [1 . . . 1], indicating that the minimum 350 and maximum 360 number of databaseAdministrators per RDBSchema is 1.
  • Referring back to FIG. 2, an integrity checker 240 preferably lists all violations of business rules. Thus, if a databaseAdministrator is not defined for an RDBSchema, then integrity checker 240 will flag this as a violation of the business rule shown in FIG. 3.
  • Reference is now made to FIG. 4, which illustrates a business rule wherein the name of a Cobol Copybook definition may be generated based on a naming standard from other meta-properties of a Cobol Copybook, such as ApplicationName and DivisionName, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention. Specifically, business rule 410 shown in FIG. 4 requires that the meta-property name 420 for the meta-class CobolCopybook 430 be the concatenation of the three strings ApplicationName 440, DivisionName 450 and FirstDataArchitectAssignedtothisAsset 460.
  • It may be appreciated by those skilled in the art that business rule 410 may be used to automatically generate the name for a CobolCopybook.
  • Examples of business rules that may be used with the present invention include inter alia:
      • arithmetic conversion rules;
      • type restrictions on inherited properties;
      • specifying metadata values as being required;
      • specifying valid ranges for metadata values;
      • specifying metadata values as being unique;
      • lookup tables;
      • naming conventions; and
      • assignments of stewardship responsibilities.
  • Business rules may also be used, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention, for type restrictions on indirect properties. Consider the following indirect sequence of meta-classes and meta-properties: C1.P1-->C2.P2-->C3. Suppose that the indirect meta-property C1.P1.P2 should be restricted to be of type S3, which is a sub-class of C3, but that C2.P2 is not to be restricted to S3. In general, there may not be an appropriate inheritance structure to impose such a restriction as a type restriction on an inherited property.
  • In accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention, a new meta-class, S2, corresponding to C1.P1, is defined as a sub-class of C2, and a business rule is used to restrict the type of S2.P2 to S3. Using this approach, none of the properties P1 or P2 in the property path are required to be inherited properties. Moreover, this approach applies to arbitrarily long property paths.
  • It may be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the present invention has widespread application. FIGS. 5-7 illustrate three different applications of the present invention in the area of enterprise metadata management.
  • Reference is now made to FIG. 5, which is a simplified block diagram of a metadata management system for importing metadata, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 5 illustrates a metamodel of an enterprise, such as the metamodel illustrated in FIGS. 2 and 4, including meta-classes and sub-classes for business applications and data assets. The class DataAsset includes inter alia sub-classes CobolCopybook, ErwinSchema, RDBSchema, XMISchema and XSDSchema. FIG. 2 displays meta-properties for the RDBSchema meta-class, and FIG. 4 displays metadata for the CobolCopybook meta-class.
  • Shown in FIG. 5 are a configurable metamodel 510, and a repository 520 of metadata that conforms to metamodel 510. Also shown in FIG. 5 are an external meta-schema 530 and a repository 540 of metadata that conforms to meta-schema 530. Since the metadata in repository 540 conforms to a different meta-schema than the metadata in repository 520, the metadata in repository 540 cannot readily be imported into repository 520. For example, the metadata in repository 540 may be metadata for XML schemas, whereas the metadata in repository 520 may be metadata for relational database schemas.
  • The system illustrated in FIG. 5 imports the metadata from repository 540 into repository 520. A mapping module 550 is used to generate a mapping 560 between the meta-schema 530 and the metamodel 510. Generation of mappings between schemas is described in applicant's aforementioned co-pending patent application U.S. Ser. No. 10/053,045. For example, mapping 560 may associate
    XML Schema Metamodel
    XML complexType --> class
    XML element --> property
  • When mapping 560 is generated, a metadata transformation module 570 uses mapping 560 to derive a data transformation for transforming metadata from repository 540 to metadata that conforms to metamodel 510. Upon transformation, the metadata in repository 540 can then be directly imported into repository 520. Derivation of transformations is also described in applicant's aforementioned co-pending patent application U.S. Ser. No. 10/053,045.
  • For example, if metadata from repositories 520 and 540 is represented by XML data, which may conform to the Metadata Interchange (XMI) standard, then the data transformation derived by transformation module 570 may be an XSLT script. XMI is a standard of the Object Management Group (OMG®) for interchanging metadata between modeling tools and metadata repositories, and XSLT is a language developed by the World-Wide Web Consortium (W3C®), for transforming XML documents into other XML documents.
  • It may be appreciated by those skilled in the art that M1 metadata can be considered as instance data for an M2 metamodel. As such the same mapping module 550 and the same transformation module 570 from FIG. 5, may also be used to map a first set of M1 metadata to a second set of M1 metadata, and to transform M0 instance data conforming to the first set of metadata to M0 instance data conforming to the second set of metadata. This allows the same tools and skills to be used for mapping metadata and transforming instance data, as is used for mapping metamodels/meta-schemas and transforming metadata.
  • Reference is now made to FIG. 6, which is a simplified block diagram of a system for validating metadata, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention. Shown in FIG. 6 are a configurable metamodel 610 and a repository 620 of metadata conforming to metamodel 610. Metamodel 610 includes one or more business rules 630, that relate meta-properties within metamodel 610, such as the business rules illustrated in FIGS. 3 and 4.
  • Shown in FIG. 6 is a validation module 640, which is preferably activated by a integrity checker control such as button 240 (FIG. 2). Preferably, validation module 640 verifies each of the business rules 630 against the metadata in repository 620, and produces a list of violations. It may be appreciated that violations of metadata rules may correspond to violations of IT policy by the actual systems that the metadata reflects.
  • It may be appreciated that the system of FIG. 6 applies to a variety of enterprise metadata. For example, metadata repository 620 may be metadata for an IT organization, and the business rules may define valid responsibility assignments. In such a case, validation module 640 is used to validate responsibility assignments.
  • Reference is now made to FIG. 7, which is a simplified block diagram of a system for automatically guiding the generation of metadata so as to ensure that the metadata is compliant with business rules of a metamodel, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention. Alternatively, the generation of metadata may be motivated by the desire to reduce the manual effort required in populating the metadata. Shown in FIG. 7 are a metamodel 710 and a repository 720 of metadata conforming to metamodel 720. Metamodel 710 includes one or more business rules 730.
  • Also shown in FIG. 7 is a metadata guide 740, which automatically guides a user who is generating metadata, so that the metadata complies with business rules 730. For example, with reference to FIG. 2, metadata guide 740 automatically ensures that each RDBSchema has a databaseAdministrator defined. Similarly, with reference to FIG. 4, metadata guide 740 automatically generates names of Cobol Copybooks, so that the name of a Copybook is a concatenation of an ApplicationName, a DivisionName and a FirstDataArchitectAssignedtothisAsset name.
  • Impact Analysis
  • The present invention has important application to impact analysis; namely, analyzing the impact of one or more IT assets on the rest of the IT infrastructure—i.e., determining, if one or more IT assets are shut down or modified, which other assets are impacted and how. Impact analysis is critical for routine system maintenance, system upgrade or modification, and for disaster recovery. Examples of impact analysis include inter alia:
      • determining which applications and systems will be impacted is a specific server shuts down;
      • determining who needs to be notified if a computer is replaced with a newer model;
      • determining which applications and systems will be impacted if a specific employee is promoted;
      • determining which data sources are fed by data from a specific database, either directly or indirectly; and
      • determine which data transformations are impacted if the type of a specific database column is changed, say from VARCHAR to INTEGER.
  • In a very general framework, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention, a binary relation such as “impacts” and its inverse binary relation “is impacted by” are imposed on meta-classes. These relations model the dependencies whereby one class may impact or may be impacted by another class, respectively. To generate these binary relations within a metamodel, appropriate meta-properties within the metamodel are characterized by “impacts” or “is impacted by”, and the binary relations then correspond to the transitive closure of these characterizations. Thus, if asset A impacts asset B, and asset B impacts asset C, then asset A also impacts asset C.
  • Within this general framework, the characterization of meta-properties as “impacts” or “is impacted by” is accomplished through a business rule referred to as an “Inclusion BR” and a property referred to as “impacts”. The Inclusion BR indicates that a first property P1 is included in a second property P2, where the domain of P1 is a sub-class of the domain of P2; namely, that whenever instance I is related to instance J via property P1, then instance I is also related to instance I via property P2. It may be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the Inclusion BR for P1 being included in P2 corresponds to P1 being a sub-property of P2.
  • To make the property “impacts” as broad as possible, it is preferably defined on a super-meta-class of the metamodel, such as a meta-class “Being” which is a super-meta-class of all meta-classes within the metamodel. Thus the Inclusion BR, indicating that a meta-property P from a domain meta-class C1 to a co-domain meta-class C2 is included in property “impacts”, requires that whenever instance I1 of meta-class C1 is related to instance I2 of meta-class C2 via meta-property P, then I1 impacts I2.
  • For example, for a meta-class “Server”, the Inclusion BR may specify that the two meta-properties “hasRunningApplications” (Server-->Application) and “hasRunningDBs” (Server-->Database) are impact meta-properties; i.e., included within the meta-property “impacts”. Thereafter an impact analysis on a specific server will produce all applications that run on the server and all databases that are hosted by the server. Similarly, for a meta-class “Application”, the Inclusion BR may specify that the two meta-properties “is FeedingInto” (Application-->RDBTable) and “is CreatingXML” (Application-->XMLDocument) are impact properties. Combining these by transitivity, a specific server may impact various relational database tables and various XML documents.
  • More specifically, as there are various type of impacts in an enterprise, a variety of different impact analyses may be performed; for example, a “downtime” impact analysis, a “procurement” impact analysis, or a “personnel” impact analysis. The same meta-class may participate in multiple impact analyses. Reference is now made to FIG. 8, which is an illustration of a dialogue box for creating an impact analysis (IA) meta-class, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention. As shown in FIG. 8, a meta-class named “DowntimeImpactItem” 810 is created, together with meta-properties “directDowntimeVictims” 820 and “allDowntimeVictims” 830, the former property corresponding to direct dependencies and the latter property corresponding to both direct and indirect dependencies. Also shown in FIG. 8 is the name of an impact analysis, “Downtime Impact Analysis” 840, which is used to perform an impact analysis vis a vis downtime impacts.
  • The meta-class “DowntimeImpactItem” serves as a superclass for all meta-classes whose instances can participate in the analysis. Thus, for example, if ComputingDevice is a meta-class that should participate in downtime impact analysis, then it should be designated as a sub-class of DowntimeImpactItem and, as such, it inherits the properties directDowntimeVictims and allDowntimeVictims. Instances of sub-classes of meta-class ComputingDevice, such as instances of a class ServerComputer, of a class GatewayComputer and of a class ClientComputer, will then all participate in downtime impact analysis. Any meta-class that inherits from DowntimeImpactItem can be included within a downtime impact analysis. Similarly, if a meta-class inherits from multiple meta-classes, each super-class being a specific impact analysis type, then instances of the meta-class participate in each of the specific impact analyses.
  • It may thus be appreciated that an IA type of entity is preferably represented by a meta-class that has a property such as inter alia “impacts”, “affects” or “hasConsequencesFor”. The name of the meta-class preferably reflects the role of an instance class of its IA type, such as inter alia “DownTimeImpactItem” or “ProcurementImpactItem”.
  • Reference is now made to FIG. 9, which is an illustration of a dialogue box that continues the workflow from FIG. 8, for designating properties as being germane to a particular impact analysis, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention. Shown in the left panel of FIG. 9 is a meta-class “DowntimeImpactItem” 905, as defined in the dialogue box of FIG. 8, from which meta-classes “Application” 910 and “Server” 915 inherit, by virtue of being sub-classes thereof. Shown in the right panel of FIG. 9 are various properties of the meta-class Server, such as “ApplicationID” 920, “Applications” 925, “CPU” 930 and the inherited property directDowntimeVictims 935, as also defined in the dialogue box of FIG. 8. Also shown in FIG. 8 is a business rule that assigns the meta-property “Applications” 940 to Downtime Impact Analysis 945. For convenience, a user merely selects the Applications meta-property 925 from the list of Server meta-properties, and then clicks on the Add button 950. Such a business rule indicates that instance classes of Applications are impacted when corresponding instance classes of Server go down. As such, when a downtime impact analysis is performed, applications running on server computers will be included in the analysis. It may thus be appreciated by those skilled in the art that impact analyses are conveniently defined via business rules of a meta-model.
  • In accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention, in order to simplify the workflow of defining impact analyses and in order to avoid potential errors in the metamodel, when a user adds a meta-property, such as Applications, with meta-classes C1 and C2 as its domain and co-domain, respectively, to an impact analysis, then meta-classes C1 and C2 are automatically designated as sub-classes of the appropriate IA meta-class, such as DowntimeImpactItem. As such, a user does not have to set these sub-class designations manually. It is also noted in FIG. 9 that, for convenience of implementation and management, IA meta-classes are direct sub-classes of meta-class “Analyzable” 955.
  • Reference is now made to FIG. 10, which is an illustration of stepwise graphical navigation of a meta-model, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention. The screen shown in FIG. 10 enables a user to explore each node in a metamodel in a controlled way. By clicking on a “plus” sign for a node A, a user instructs the navigator to display all nodes that node A has an impact relation therewith, together with arrows that are labeled in accordance with the underlying meta-properties.
  • Shown in FIG. 10 is a computer server 1010 which runs applications 1020 and 1030, and hosts a web site 1040. In turn, application 1020 writes to a data source 1050 and application 1030 writes to a data source 1060. Further in turn, data source 1050 is used by web sites 1070 and 1080, and data source 1060 is used in transformation 1090. All of the indicated properties are preferably included within an “impacts” property and, as such, server 1010 directly impacts the three IT assets 1020, 1030 and 1040, and indirectly impacts the five IT assets 1050, 1060, 1070, 1080 and 1090. It may thus be appreciated that using the present invention, an IT administrator is able to determine the impact of shutting down server 1010 or application 1020, for example.
  • In contrast to the stepwise navigation illustrated in FIG. 10, reference is now made to FIG. 11, which is an illustration of a graphic display of the transitive closure of impacted nodes, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention. Shown in FIG. 11 is a list of classes impacted by a class “Cordoba15” 1105, which is an instance of a meta-class “Computer”. The list includes a class “Market Report” 1110 and a class “Market Watch (Premium)” 1115, which are instances of a meta-class “Web Site” 1120, a class “WebSphere Business Integration Event Broker 5.0” 1125 and a class “Active Reference” 1130 which are instances of a meta-class “Application Version” 1135, a class “FRX-SAKO” 1140 and a class “Market Stage” 1145, which are instances of a meta-class “Data Source” 1150, and a class “PBDEC to AMCS” 1155, which is an instance of a meta-class “Transformation” 1160. The list includes classes that are directly and indirectly impacted by Cordoba15.
  • When a user clicks on a specific item in the list, the chain of impact dependencies is displayed below. For example, the graphic display in FIG. 11 shows the dependency chain 1165 from Cordoba15 to Market Watch (Premium). Each of the arrows 1170, 1175 and 1180 correspond to a direct impact dependency.
  • It may be appreciated by those skilled in the art that, alternatively, binary relations “impacts” and “is impacted by” may correspond to relations other than the transitive closure of “impacts” and “is impacted by” characterizations. For example, they may correspond to a transitive closure up to a specified number of levels, so that indirect impact is restricted to, say, three levels.
  • It may also be appreciated that property inclusion may alternatively be implemented using descriptors to tag certain meta-properties as being impact-related. However, implementation using an Inclusion BR allows more generality, including (i) allowing different types of impact or be distinguished, and (ii) allowing inference to take advantage of the “impacts” property.
  • Data Lineage
  • A somewhat similar application to impact analysis is data lineage, which is a technique for finding sources of property values. For example, a user may want to know “for a property “productName”, which is part of an Entity “Product Parameters”, which is part of a Data Asset “ProductSearchUI” where does its value come from?”
  • In accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention, data lineage is described as if it were a four-way impact analysis, using two axes. A first axis, the “data flow axis”, indicates the flow of data using a property “Downstream Items” and a corresponding inverse property “Upstream Items”. A second axis, the “system composition axis”, indicates system components using a property “subUnits” and a corresponding inverse property “superUnits.” Reference is now made to FIG. 12, which is an illustration of a graphical user interface for viewing data lineage results arranged along the two above axes, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention. The results illustrated in FIG. 12 are evoked when a user selects the productName property and invokes data lineage analysis. The horizontal arrows depict the data flow axis and the vertical arrows depict the system composition axis.
  • Specifically, as seen in FIG. 12 from the vertical dependencies, “productName” 1210 is an attribute of a GenericEntity “Product Parameters” 1230, and Product Parameters 1230 is an asset from a DataAsset “ProductSearchUI” 1230. Moreover, as seen from the horizontal dependencies, productName 1210 is assigned a value based on a corresponding property “productName” 1240 of class “WsdlValuePart”. In turn, productName 1240 is part of a message “product Search Response” 1250. Moreover, productName 1240 is assigned a value from a Column “longName” 1260 of a relational database table “prod” 1270.
  • Reference is now made to FIG. 13, which is an illustration of a graphical user interface for marking meta-properties as being Downstream Items, Upstream Items, subunits or superUnits, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention. As shown in FIG. 13, a meta-property “copiedFrom” 1310, is designated as being included in Upstream Items 1320, and its inverse meta-property, “copiedTo” 1330 is included in Downstream Items 1340. Specifically, “copiedFrom” and “copiedTo” are meta-properties from meta-class WsdlValuePart to meta-class ValueElement.
  • In the foregoing specification, the invention has been described with reference to specific exemplary embodiments thereof. It will, however, be evident that various modifications and changes may be made to the specific exemplary embodiments without departing from the broader spirit and scope of the invention as set forth in the appended claims. Accordingly, the specification and drawings are to be regarded in an illustrative rather than a restrictive sense.

Claims (62)

1. A metadata management system for importing, integrating and federating metadata, comprising:
a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets;
a metadata repository for storing metadata whose structure reflects said metamodel;
at least one external metadata source, which is able to persist metadata in accordance with the structure of a meta-schema;
a mapping module for mapping said meta-schema to the metamodel; and
a transformation module, operatively coupled to said metadata mapping module, for translating specific metadata from said at least one external metadata source to said metadata repository, for use in import, export or synchronization of metadata between said at least one external metadata source and said metadata repository.
2. The metadata management system of claim 1 wherein the mapping module is also used to map specific metadata to an information model.
3. The metadata management system of claim 2 wherein the information model is an ontology model.
4. The metadata management system of claim 1 wherein said metamodel complies with the OMG MOF standard.
5. The metadata management system of claim 1 wherein said metamodel is an ontology.
6. The metadata management system of claim 1 wherein said transformation module translates metadata from the external metadata source into an XMI document.
7. The metadata management system of claim 1 wherein said transformation module transforms metadata using an XSLT script.
8. The metadata management system of claim 1 wherein said mapping module maps data element groups, and then maps specific data elements within each group.
9. A metadata management system for validating metadata, comprising:
a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets;
business rules on said metamodel; and
a metadata validation module operating on said configurable metamodel for validating specific metadata against said metamodel business rules.
10. The metadata management system of claim 9 wherein the business rules include an arithmetic conversion rule.
11. The metadata management system of claim 9 wherein the business rules include type restriction on an inherited property.
12. The metadata management system of claim 9 wherein the business rules include specifying a metadata value as being required.
13. The metadata management system of claim 9 wherein the business rules include specifying a valid range for a metadata value.
14. The metadata management system of claim 9 wherein the business rules include specifying a metadata value as being unique.
15. The metadata management system of claim 9 wherein the business rules include a lookup table.
16. The metadata management system of claim 9 wherein the business rules include a naming convention.
17. The metadata management system of claim 9 wherein the business rules are used to specify assignment of stewardship responsibility.
18. A metadata management system for generating metadata comprising:
a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets;
business rules on said metamodel; and
a metadata generation module operating on said configurable metamodel for guiding the generation of specific metadata using said metamodel business rules.
19. The metadata management system of claim 18 wherein the business rules include an arithmetic conversion rule.
20. The metadata management system of claim 18 wherein the business rules include type restriction on an inherited property.
21. The metadata management system of claim 18 wherein the business rules include specifying a metadata value as being required.
22. The metadata management system of claim 18 wherein the business rules include specifying a valid range for a metadata value.
23. The metadata management system of claim 18 wherein the business rules include specifying a metadata value as being unique.
24. The metadata management system of claim 18 wherein the business rules include a lookup table.
25. The metadata management system of claim 18 wherein the business rules include a naming convention.
26. The metadata management system of claim 18 wherein the business rules are used to specify assignment of stewardship responsibility.
27. A metadata management system for managing an IT organization, comprising:
a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets;
business rules on said metamodel; and
a validation module operating on said configurable metamodel for validating rules for IT governance against said metamodel business rules.
28. The metadata management system of claim 27 wherein the rules for IT governance include assignment of responsibility for assets.
29. A method for importing, integrating and federating metadata, comprising:
providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, (ii) a metadata repository for storing metadata whose structure reflects the metamodel, and (iii) at least one external metadata source, which is able to persist metadata in accordance with the structure of a meta-schema;
mapping the meta-schema to the metamodel; and
translating specific metadata from the external metadata source to the metadata repository for use in import, export or synchronization of metadata between the at least one external metadata source and the metadata repository.
30. The method of claim 29 wherein said mapping maps specific metadata to an information model.
31. The method of claim 30 wherein the information model is an ontology model.
32. The method of claim 29 wherein the metamodel complies with the OMG MOF standard.
33. The method of claim 29 wherein the metamodel is an ontology.
34. The method of claim 29 wherein said mapping translates metadata from the external metadata source into an XMI document.
35. The method of claim 29 wherein said translating uses an XSLT script.
36. The method of claim 29 wherein said mapping comprises:
mapping data element groups; and
mapping specific data elements within each group.
37. A method for validating metadata, comprising:
providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, and (ii) business rules on the metamodel; and
validating specific metadata against the metamodel business rules.
38. A method for generating metadata comprising:
providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, and (ii) business rules on the metamodel; and
guiding the generation of specific metadata using the metamodel business rules.
39. A method for managing an IT organization, comprising:
providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, and (ii) business rules on the metamodel; and
validating rules for IT governance against the metamodel business rules.
40. The method of claim 29 wherein the rules for IT governance include assignment of responsibility for assets.
41. A computer-readable storage medium storing program code for causing a computer to perform a method of:
providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, (ii) a metadata repository for storing metadata whose structure reflects the metamodel, and (iii) at least one external metadata source, which is able to persist metadata in accordance with the structure of a meta-schema;
mapping the meta-schema to the metamodel; and
translating specific metadata from the external metadata source to the metadata repository for use in import, export or synchronization of metadata between the at least one external metadata source and the metadata repository.
42. A computer-readable storage medium storing program code for causing a computer to perform a method of:
providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, and (ii) business rules on the metamodel; and
validating specific metadata against the metamodel business rules.
43. A computer-readable storage medium storing program code for causing a computer to perform a method of:
providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, and (ii) business rules on the metamodel; and
guiding the generation of specific metadata using the metamodel business rules.
44. A computer-readable storage medium storing program code for causing a computer to perform a method of:
providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes enterprise IT assets, and (ii) business rules on the metamodel; and
validating responsibility assignments against the metamodel business rules.
45. A metadata management system for performing impact analysis on an IT system comprising:
a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes assets of an enterprise IT system, the metamodel including meta-classes and meta-properties;
business rules on said metamodel for indicating that certain meta-properties have impact consequences; and
an impact analyzer operating on said configurable metamodel for determining which assets of the enterprise IT system are impacted by one or more specified assets.
46. The metadata management system of claim 43 whereby assets of the enterprise IT system include server computers.
47. The metadata management system of claim 43 whereby assets of the enterprise IT system include web sites.
48. The metadata management system of claim 43 whereby assets of the enterprise IT system include data sources.
49. The metadata management system of claim 43 whereby assets of the enterprise IT system include data transformations.
50. The metadata management system of claim 43 whereby assets of the enterprise IT system include software applications.
51. The metadata management system of claim 43 whereby the business rules dictate whether impact consequences are transitive and, if so, to what degree.
52. A method for generating metadata comprising:
providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes assets of an enterprise IT system, the metamodel including meta-classes and meta-properties, and (ii) business rules on said metamodel for indicating that certain meta-properties have impact consequences; and
determining which assets of the enterprise IT system are impacted by one or more specified assets.
53. The method of claim 52 whereby assets of the enterprise IT system include server computers.
54. The method of claim 52 whereby assets of the enterprise IT system include web sites.
55. The method of claim 52 whereby assets of the enterprise IT system include data sources.
56. The method of claim 52 whereby assets of the enterprise IT system include data transformations.
57. The method of claim 52 whereby assets of the enterprise IT system include software applications.
58. The method of claim 52 whereby the business rules dictate whether impact consequences are transitive and, if so, to what degree.
59. A computer-readable storage medium storing program code for causing a computer to perform a method of:
providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes assets of an enterprise IT system, the metamodel including meta-classes and meta-properties, and (ii) business rules on said metamodel for indicating that certain meta-properties have impact consequences; and
determining which assets of the enterprise IT system are impacted by one or more specified assets.
60. A metadata management system for performing impact analysis on an IT system comprising:
a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes assets of an enterprise IT system, the metamodel including meta-classes and meta-properties;
a meta-descriptor for meta-properties to designate that a meta-property has an impact consequence; and
an impact analyzer operating on said configurable metamodel for determining which assets of the enterprise IT system are impacted by one or more specified assets.
61. A method for generating metadata comprising:
providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes assets of an enterprise IT system, the metamodel including meta-classes and meta-properties, and (ii) a meta-descriptor for meta-properties to designate that a meta-property has an impact consequence; and
determining which assets of the enterprise IT system are impacted by one or more specified assets.
62. A computer-readable storage medium storing program code for causing a computer to perform a method of:
providing (i) a configurable metamodel for modeling metadata that describes assets of an enterprise IT system, the metamodel including meta-classes and meta-properties, and (ii) a meta-descriptor for meta-properties to designate that a meta-property has an impact consequence; and
determining which assets of the enterprise IT system are impacted by one or more specified assets.
US11/219,039 2001-05-25 2005-09-01 Business rules for configurable metamodels and enterprise impact analysis Abandoned US20060064666A1 (en)

Priority Applications (2)

Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
US11/219,039 US20060064666A1 (en) 2001-05-25 2005-09-01 Business rules for configurable metamodels and enterprise impact analysis
US13/421,611 US8548938B2 (en) 2001-05-25 2012-03-15 Business rules for configurable metamodels and enterprise impact analysis

Applications Claiming Priority (3)

Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
US09/866,101 US7099885B2 (en) 2001-05-25 2001-05-25 Method and system for collaborative ontology modeling
US10/053,045 US20040216030A1 (en) 2001-05-25 2002-01-15 Method and system for deriving a transformation by referring schema to a central model
US11/219,039 US20060064666A1 (en) 2001-05-25 2005-09-01 Business rules for configurable metamodels and enterprise impact analysis

Related Parent Applications (1)

Application Number Title Priority Date Filing Date
US10/053,045 Continuation-In-Part US20040216030A1 (en) 2001-05-25 2002-01-15 Method and system for deriving a transformation by referring schema to a central model

Related Child Applications (1)

Application Number Title Priority Date Filing Date
US13/421,611 Division US8548938B2 (en) 2001-05-25 2012-03-15 Business rules for configurable metamodels and enterprise impact analysis

Publications (1)

Publication Number Publication Date
US20060064666A1 true US20060064666A1 (en) 2006-03-23

Family

ID=36075407

Family Applications (2)

Application Number Title Priority Date Filing Date
US11/219,039 Abandoned US20060064666A1 (en) 2001-05-25 2005-09-01 Business rules for configurable metamodels and enterprise impact analysis
US13/421,611 Expired - Fee Related US8548938B2 (en) 2001-05-25 2012-03-15 Business rules for configurable metamodels and enterprise impact analysis

Family Applications After (1)

Application Number Title Priority Date Filing Date
US13/421,611 Expired - Fee Related US8548938B2 (en) 2001-05-25 2012-03-15 Business rules for configurable metamodels and enterprise impact analysis

Country Status (1)

Country Link
US (2) US20060064666A1 (en)

Cited By (42)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
US20050021537A1 (en) * 2003-07-22 2005-01-27 Rainer Brendle Self-describing business objects
US20050022160A1 (en) * 2002-06-17 2005-01-27 Adaptik Corporation Method and apparatus for creating an adaptive application
US20050198385A1 (en) * 2004-01-30 2005-09-08 Aust Brian S. System and method for generating a consistent user name-space on networked devices
US20070032855A1 (en) * 1998-01-14 2007-02-08 Advanced Stent Technologies, Inc. Extendible stent apparatus
US20070106797A1 (en) * 2005-09-29 2007-05-10 Nortel Networks Limited Mission goal statement to policy statement translation
US20070294267A1 (en) * 2006-06-16 2007-12-20 Business Objects, S.A. Apparatus and method for processing of COBOL nested data record schemas
US20070294246A1 (en) * 2006-06-16 2007-12-20 Microsoft Corporation Associating metadata on a per-user basis
US20070294677A1 (en) * 2006-06-16 2007-12-20 Business Objects, S.A. Apparatus and method for processing cobol data record schemas having disparate formats
US7343377B1 (en) * 2003-07-07 2008-03-11 Unisys Corporation Method and system for verifying the integrity of a database
US20080133594A1 (en) * 2006-12-01 2008-06-05 Goldman, Sachs & Co. Application Directory
US20080189265A1 (en) * 2007-02-06 2008-08-07 Microsoft Corporation Techniques to manage vocabulary terms for a taxonomy system
US7451403B1 (en) * 2002-12-20 2008-11-11 Rage Frameworks, Inc. System and method for developing user interfaces purely by modeling as meta data in software application
US20090030880A1 (en) * 2007-07-27 2009-01-29 Boris Melamed Model-Based Analysis
US20090037360A1 (en) * 2007-08-01 2009-02-05 International Business Machines Corporation Auto-Triggered Incremental Execution of Object Business Rules in Database Applications
US20090112939A1 (en) * 2007-10-31 2009-04-30 Microsoft Corporation Linking framework for information technology management
US7640261B2 (en) 2006-06-16 2009-12-29 Business Objects Software Ltd. Apparatus and method for processing data corresponding to multiple COBOL data record schemas
US20090327343A1 (en) * 2008-06-26 2009-12-31 Microsoft Corporation Schema-based data transfer between a data-based application and a document application
WO2010122420A1 (en) * 2009-04-23 2010-10-28 Nokia Corporation Method, apparatus and computer program product for providing an adaptive context model framework
US20100318574A1 (en) * 2009-06-10 2010-12-16 International Business Machines Corporation Generating references to reusable code in a schema
US20110078660A1 (en) * 2009-09-29 2011-03-31 International Business Machines Corporation Metamodeling Contextual Navigation of Computer Software Applications
US7987159B2 (en) 2006-09-15 2011-07-26 Microsoft Corporation Detecting and managing changes in business data integration solutions
US20120042299A1 (en) * 2008-10-21 2012-02-16 Oswald Perrin Model transformation unit
US20120066661A1 (en) * 2010-09-09 2012-03-15 International Business Machines Corporation Verifying programming artifacts generated from ontology artifacts or models
US20120084257A1 (en) * 2008-10-06 2012-04-05 Teradata Us, Inc. Master data management versioning
WO2012057382A1 (en) * 2010-10-29 2012-05-03 한국과학기술정보연구원 Ontology-based method for managing the integration of metadata
US8412746B2 (en) 2001-05-25 2013-04-02 International Business Machines Corporation Method and system for federated querying of data sources
US8548938B2 (en) 2001-05-25 2013-10-01 International Business Machines Corporation Business rules for configurable metamodels and enterprise impact analysis
US20130332423A1 (en) * 2012-06-12 2013-12-12 Accenture Global Services Limited Data lineage tracking
US20150082291A1 (en) * 2013-09-13 2015-03-19 Microsoft Corporation Update installer with technical impact analysis
US20150082272A1 (en) * 2012-01-05 2015-03-19 International Business Machines Corporation Multiple Architecture Viewpoints In Single Unified Modeling Language (UML) Model
US20150187103A1 (en) * 2013-12-26 2015-07-02 International Business Machines Corporation Obscured relationship data within a graph
US9239854B2 (en) 2013-03-15 2016-01-19 Sas Institute Inc. Multi-domain impact analysis using object relationships
US20160373313A1 (en) * 2015-06-17 2016-12-22 Tata Consultancy Services Limited Impact analysis system and method
US9665359B2 (en) 2013-09-13 2017-05-30 Microsoft Technology Licensing, Llc Automatically resolving conflicts after installation of selected updates in a computer system
US9680790B2 (en) 2013-08-29 2017-06-13 Mastercard International Incorporated Systems and methods for resolving data inconsistencies between domain name systems
US9798523B2 (en) * 2015-06-11 2017-10-24 Electronics And Telecommunications Research Institute Method for generating workflow model and method and apparatus for executing workflow model
US9830142B2 (en) 2013-09-13 2017-11-28 Microsoft Technology Licensing, Llc Automatic installation of selected updates in multiple environments
US10026064B2 (en) 2013-09-13 2018-07-17 Microsoft Technology Licensing, Llc Automatically recommending updates based on stored lifecycle information
US10127386B2 (en) * 2016-05-12 2018-11-13 Synopsys, Inc. Systems and methods for adaptive analysis of software
US10275221B2 (en) * 2015-03-06 2019-04-30 Cisco Technology, Inc. Systems and methods for generating data visualization applications
US10489384B2 (en) * 2016-11-09 2019-11-26 Ab Initio Technology Llc Systems and methods for determining relationships among data elements
CN114911773A (en) * 2022-05-20 2022-08-16 年华数据科技有限公司 Universal meta-model design method

Families Citing this family (11)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
US8463053B1 (en) 2008-08-08 2013-06-11 The Research Foundation Of State University Of New York Enhanced max margin learning on multimodal data mining in a multimedia database
US9189566B2 (en) * 2010-12-07 2015-11-17 Sap Se Facilitating extraction and discovery of enterprise services
US9069844B2 (en) 2011-11-02 2015-06-30 Sap Se Facilitating extraction and discovery of enterprise services
US9177289B2 (en) 2012-05-03 2015-11-03 Sap Se Enhancing enterprise service design knowledge using ontology-based clustering
US9311429B2 (en) * 2013-07-23 2016-04-12 Sap Se Canonical data model for iterative effort reduction in business-to-business schema integration
US10614048B2 (en) 2013-09-20 2020-04-07 Oracle International Corporation Techniques for correlating data in a repository system
CN103714129B (en) * 2013-12-12 2016-09-14 用友网络科技股份有限公司 Dynamic data structure based on conditional plan and the construction device of relation and construction method
US9984136B1 (en) * 2014-03-21 2018-05-29 Exlservice Technology Solutions, Llc System, method, and program product for lightweight data federation
US10223473B2 (en) 2015-03-31 2019-03-05 International Business Machines Corporation Distribution of metadata for importation
CN104881747A (en) * 2015-06-01 2015-09-02 北京圆通慧达管理软件开发有限公司 Data collaboration method and data collaboration system
US20220414165A1 (en) * 2021-06-29 2022-12-29 EMC IP Holding Company LLC Informed labeling of records for faster discovery of business critical information

Citations (96)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
US5295242A (en) * 1990-11-02 1994-03-15 Consilium, Inc. Apparatus and method for viewing relationships in a factory management system
US5499371A (en) * 1993-07-21 1996-03-12 Persistence Software, Inc. Method and apparatus for automatic generation of object oriented code for mapping relational data to objects
US5627979A (en) * 1994-07-18 1997-05-06 International Business Machines Corporation System and method for providing a graphical user interface for mapping and accessing objects in data stores
US5710917A (en) * 1995-06-07 1998-01-20 International Business Machines Corporation Method for deriving data mappings and data aliases
US5734887A (en) * 1995-09-29 1998-03-31 International Business Machines Corporation Method and apparatus for logical data access to a physical relational database
US5768580A (en) * 1995-05-31 1998-06-16 Oracle Corporation Methods and apparatus for dynamic classification of discourse
US5838965A (en) * 1994-11-10 1998-11-17 Cadis, Inc. Object oriented database management system
US5857197A (en) * 1997-03-20 1999-01-05 Thought Inc. System and method for accessing data stores as objects
US5873093A (en) * 1994-12-07 1999-02-16 Next Software, Inc. Method and apparatus for mapping objects to a data source
US5905987A (en) * 1997-03-19 1999-05-18 Microsoft Corporation Method, data structure, and computer program product for object state storage in a repository
US5937409A (en) * 1997-07-25 1999-08-10 Oracle Corporation Integrating relational databases in an object oriented environment
US5970490A (en) * 1996-11-05 1999-10-19 Xerox Corporation Integration platform for heterogeneous databases
US5995756A (en) * 1997-02-14 1999-11-30 Inprise Corporation System for internet-based delivery of computer applications
US6014666A (en) * 1997-10-28 2000-01-11 Microsoft Corporation Declarative and programmatic access control of component-based server applications using roles
US6035342A (en) * 1997-03-19 2000-03-07 Microsoft Corporation Method and computer program product for implementing object relationships
US6192365B1 (en) * 1995-07-20 2001-02-20 Novell, Inc. Transaction log management in a disconnectable computer and network
US6199059B1 (en) * 1998-04-22 2001-03-06 International Computex, Inc. System and method for classifying and retrieving information with virtual object hierarchy
US6219654B1 (en) * 1998-11-02 2001-04-17 International Business Machines Corporation Method, system and program product for performing cost analysis of an information technology implementation
US6233586B1 (en) * 1998-04-01 2001-05-15 International Business Machines Corp. Federated searching of heterogeneous datastores using a federated query object
US6289338B1 (en) * 1997-12-15 2001-09-11 Manning & Napier Information Services Database analysis using a probabilistic ontology
US6292804B1 (en) * 1995-05-09 2001-09-18 Intergraph Corporation Object relationship management system
US6301584B1 (en) * 1997-08-21 2001-10-09 Home Information Services, Inc. System and method for retrieving entities and integrating data
US6311194B1 (en) * 2000-03-15 2001-10-30 Taalee, Inc. System and method for creating a semantic web and its applications in browsing, searching, profiling, personalization and advertising
US6327593B1 (en) * 1998-12-23 2001-12-04 Unisys Corporation Automated system and method for capturing and managing user knowledge within a search system
US6343265B1 (en) * 1998-07-28 2002-01-29 International Business Machines Corporation System and method for mapping a design model to a common repository with context preservation
US6374252B1 (en) * 1995-04-24 2002-04-16 I2 Technologies Us, Inc. Modeling of object-oriented database structures, translation to relational database structures, and dynamic searches thereon
US20020059187A1 (en) * 1998-09-21 2002-05-16 Microsoft Corporation Internal database validation
US20020059183A1 (en) * 2000-09-25 2002-05-16 Li-Wen Chen Method and system for managing event attributes
US6397232B1 (en) * 2001-02-02 2002-05-28 Acer Inc. Method and system for translating the format of the content of document file
US6424973B1 (en) * 1998-07-24 2002-07-23 Jarg Corporation Search system and method based on multiple ontologies
US6424974B1 (en) * 1997-03-31 2002-07-23 International Business Machines Corporation Storing P-code in a database
US20020099738A1 (en) * 2000-11-22 2002-07-25 Grant Hugh Alexander Automated web access for back-end enterprise systems
US20020107844A1 (en) * 2000-12-08 2002-08-08 Keon-Hoe Cha Information generation and retrieval method based on standardized format of sentence structure and semantic structure and system using the same
US20020169842A1 (en) * 2001-04-02 2002-11-14 Centegy Corporation Method and system for facilitating the integration of a plurality of dissimilar systems
US20020194154A1 (en) * 2001-06-05 2002-12-19 Levy Joshua Lerner Systems, methods and computer program products for integrating biological/chemical databases using aliases
US6497943B1 (en) * 2000-02-14 2002-12-24 International Business Machines Corporation Surface metal balancing to reduce chip carrier flexing
US6498795B1 (en) * 1998-11-18 2002-12-24 Nec Usa Inc. Method and apparatus for active information discovery and retrieval
US20030018616A1 (en) * 2001-06-05 2003-01-23 Wilbanks John Thompson Systems, methods and computer program products for integrating databases to create an ontology network
US6513059B1 (en) * 2000-08-24 2003-01-28 Cambira Corporation Adaptive collaborative intelligent network system
US20030036917A1 (en) * 2001-04-25 2003-02-20 Metallect Corporation Service provision system and method
US6526416B1 (en) * 1998-06-30 2003-02-25 Microsoft Corporation Compensating resource managers
US6532471B1 (en) * 2000-12-11 2003-03-11 International Business Machines Corporation Interface repository browser and editor
US20030050932A1 (en) * 2000-09-01 2003-03-13 Pace Charles P. System and method for transactional deployment of J2EE web components, enterprise java bean components, and application data over multi-tiered computer networks
US6560595B1 (en) * 1999-11-15 2003-05-06 Novell, Inc. Operator for correlated predicates in a query
US20030101170A1 (en) * 2001-05-25 2003-05-29 Joseph Edelstein Data query and location through a central ontology model
US6578046B2 (en) * 1998-04-01 2003-06-10 International Business Machines Corporation Federated searches of heterogeneous datastores using a federated datastore object
US20030110055A1 (en) * 2000-04-10 2003-06-12 Chau Bang Thinh Electronic catalogue
US20030120665A1 (en) * 2001-05-25 2003-06-26 Joshua Fox Run-time architecture for enterprise integration with transformation generation
US6591272B1 (en) * 1999-02-25 2003-07-08 Tricoron Networks, Inc. Method and apparatus to make and transmit objects from a database on a server computer to a client computer
US20030163597A1 (en) * 2001-05-25 2003-08-28 Hellman Ziv Zalman Method and system for collaborative ontology modeling
US20030167445A1 (en) * 2002-03-04 2003-09-04 Hong Su Method and system of document transformation between a source extensible markup language (XML) schema and a target XML schema
US20030172368A1 (en) * 2001-12-26 2003-09-11 Elizabeth Alumbaugh System and method for autonomously generating heterogeneous data source interoperability bridges based on semantic modeling derived from self adapting ontology
US20030191608A1 (en) * 2001-04-30 2003-10-09 Anderson Mark Stephen Data processing and observation system
US6633869B1 (en) * 1995-05-09 2003-10-14 Intergraph Corporation Managing object relationships using an object repository
US6633878B1 (en) * 1999-07-30 2003-10-14 Accenture Llp Initializing an ecommerce database framework
US6640231B1 (en) * 2000-10-06 2003-10-28 Ontology Works, Inc. Ontology for database design and application development
US6651244B1 (en) * 1999-07-26 2003-11-18 Cisco Technology, Inc. System and method for determining program complexity
US20030233224A1 (en) * 2001-08-14 2003-12-18 Insightful Corporation Method and system for enhanced data searching
US20040010491A1 (en) * 2002-06-28 2004-01-15 Markus Riedinger User interface framework
US6687873B1 (en) * 2000-03-09 2004-02-03 Electronic Data Systems Corporation Method and system for reporting XML data from a legacy computer system
US6704744B1 (en) * 1994-12-07 2004-03-09 Next Computer, Inc. Method and apparatus for mapping objects to multiple tables of a database
US20040054690A1 (en) * 2002-03-08 2004-03-18 Hillerbrand Eric T. Modeling and using computer resources over a heterogeneous distributed network using semantic ontologies
US6711579B2 (en) * 2001-04-20 2004-03-23 Sree Ayyanar Spinning And Weaving Mills Limited Data storage schema independent programming for data retrieval using semantic bridge
US6711585B1 (en) * 1999-06-15 2004-03-23 Kanisa Inc. System and method for implementing a knowledge management system
US6718320B1 (en) * 1998-11-02 2004-04-06 International Business Machines Corporation Schema mapping system and method
US6728692B1 (en) * 1999-12-23 2004-04-27 Hewlett-Packard Company Apparatus for a multi-modal ontology engine
US20040093344A1 (en) * 2001-05-25 2004-05-13 Ben Berger Method and system for mapping enterprise data assets to a semantic information model
US6742054B1 (en) * 2000-04-07 2004-05-25 Vitria Technology, Inc. Method of executing a data transformation specification
US20040117346A1 (en) * 2002-09-20 2004-06-17 Kilian Stoffel Computer-based method and apparatus for repurposing an ontology
US6772031B1 (en) * 2000-05-30 2004-08-03 International Business Machines Corporation Method of, system for, and computer program product for providing a job monitor
US6778990B2 (en) * 2001-07-27 2004-08-17 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. Dynamic component activation method using a relational database as the repository for registration information
US6792580B2 (en) * 2001-01-31 2004-09-14 Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba Method and computer program product for software/hardware language model conversion
US20040220893A1 (en) * 2002-11-20 2004-11-04 Radar Networks, Inc. User interface for managing semantic objects
US20050060371A1 (en) * 2003-09-15 2005-03-17 Cohen Mitchell A. Method and system for providing a common collaboration framework accessible from within multiple applications
US6871204B2 (en) * 2000-09-07 2005-03-22 Oracle International Corporation Apparatus and method for mapping relational data and metadata to XML
US6874146B1 (en) * 1999-06-30 2005-03-29 Unisys Corporation Metadata driven system for effecting extensible data interchange based on universal modeling language (UML), meta object facility (MOF) and extensible markup language (XML) standards
US20050080656A1 (en) * 2003-10-10 2005-04-14 Unicru, Inc. Conceptualization of job candidate information
US6892238B2 (en) * 1999-01-27 2005-05-10 International Business Machines Corporation Aggregating and analyzing information about content requested in an e-commerce web environment to determine conversion rates
US20050138173A1 (en) * 2003-12-22 2005-06-23 Ha Young G. Ontology-based service discovery system and method for ad hoc networks
US20050197926A1 (en) * 2000-09-26 2005-09-08 I2 Technologies Us, Inc. System and method for identifying a product
US6957214B2 (en) * 2000-06-23 2005-10-18 The Johns Hopkins University Architecture for distributed database information access
US20050251533A1 (en) * 2004-03-16 2005-11-10 Ascential Software Corporation Migrating data integration processes through use of externalized metadata representations
US20050267871A1 (en) * 2001-08-14 2005-12-01 Insightful Corporation Method and system for extending keyword searching to syntactically and semantically annotated data
US6978257B1 (en) * 2000-01-31 2005-12-20 International Business Machines Corporation System and method for measuring and pricing midrange computer server outsourcing services
US6999956B2 (en) * 2000-11-16 2006-02-14 Ward Mullins Dynamic object-driven database manipulation and mapping system
US7024425B2 (en) * 2000-09-07 2006-04-04 Oracle International Corporation Method and apparatus for flexible storage and uniform manipulation of XML data in a relational database system
US7027974B1 (en) * 2000-10-27 2006-04-11 Science Applications International Corporation Ontology-based parser for natural language processing
US7096224B2 (en) * 2001-09-28 2006-08-22 Oracle International Corporation Mechanism for mapping XML schemas to object-relational database systems
US7111297B1 (en) * 2000-05-02 2006-09-19 Microsoft Corporation Methods and architectures for resource management
US20060218177A1 (en) * 2005-03-25 2006-09-28 Yuan-Chi Chang System and method for storing and retrieving data through an inferencing-enabled metadata system
US20070038500A1 (en) * 1999-08-20 2007-02-15 ACL International, Inc., Ontology-driven information system
US7254589B2 (en) * 2004-05-21 2007-08-07 International Business Machines Corporation Apparatus and method for managing and inferencing contextural relationships accessed by the context engine to answer queries received from the application program interface, wherein ontology manager is operationally coupled with a working memory
US7278164B2 (en) * 2001-01-05 2007-10-02 Revit Technology Corporation Software usage/procurement management
US7302410B1 (en) * 2000-12-22 2007-11-27 Demandtec, Inc. Econometric optimization engine
US7315849B2 (en) * 2000-02-28 2008-01-01 Hyperroll Israel, Ltd. Enterprise-wide data-warehouse with integrated data aggregation engine
US20080140549A1 (en) * 1997-01-06 2008-06-12 Jeff Scott Eder Automated method of and system for identifying, measuring and enhancing categories of value for a value chain

Family Cites Families (58)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
US5799309A (en) 1994-12-29 1998-08-25 International Business Machines Corporation Generating an optimized set of relational queries fetching data in an object-relational database
US6003034A (en) 1995-05-16 1999-12-14 Tuli; Raja Singh Linking of multiple icons to data units
US6173289B1 (en) 1995-07-07 2001-01-09 Novell, Inc. Apparatus and method for performing actions on object-oriented software objects in a directory services system
US6112201A (en) 1995-08-29 2000-08-29 Oracle Corporation Virtual bookshelf
US5878434A (en) 1996-07-18 1999-03-02 Novell, Inc Transaction clash management in a disconnectable computer and network
US5950190A (en) 1997-05-13 1999-09-07 Aptek, Inc. Dynamic, self-modifying graphical user interface for relational database applications
US6175837B1 (en) 1998-06-29 2001-01-16 Sun Microsystems, Inc. Object-relational mapping toll that processes views
US6569207B1 (en) 1998-10-05 2003-05-27 International Business Machines Corporation Converting schemas to component models
JP2002528819A (en) 1998-10-28 2002-09-03 バーティカルワン コーポレイション Automatic aggregation device and method, device and method for delivering electronic personal information or data, and transaction involving electronic personal information or data
US7007029B1 (en) 1999-01-15 2006-02-28 Metaedge Corporation System for visualizing information in a data warehousing environment
US6446110B1 (en) 1999-04-05 2002-09-03 International Business Machines Corporation Method and apparatus for representing host datastream screen image information using markup languages
US7472349B1 (en) 1999-06-01 2008-12-30 Oracle International Corporation Dynamic services infrastructure for allowing programmatic access to internet and other resources
EP1266317A4 (en) 1999-06-14 2005-12-14 Integral Dev Corp System and method for conducting web-based financial transactions in capital markets
EP1305746A2 (en) 1999-08-20 2003-05-02 Black Pearl, Inc. Ontology-driven information system
JP2001092827A (en) 1999-09-20 2001-04-06 Toshiba Corp Device and method for managing data
US6721727B2 (en) 1999-12-02 2004-04-13 International Business Machines Corporation XML documents stored as column data
US6754670B1 (en) 1999-12-17 2004-06-22 International Business Machines Corporation Mapping relational tables to object oriented classes
US6643652B2 (en) 2000-01-14 2003-11-04 Saba Software, Inc. Method and apparatus for managing data exchange among systems in a network
US6604100B1 (en) 2000-02-09 2003-08-05 At&T Corp. Method for converting relational data into a structured document
AU2001243597A1 (en) 2000-03-03 2001-09-17 Radiant Logic, Inc. System and method for providing access to databases via directories and other hierarchical structures and interfaces
US6732175B1 (en) 2000-04-13 2004-05-04 Intel Corporation Network apparatus for switching based on content of application data
US6898618B1 (en) 2000-05-09 2005-05-24 Sun Microsystems, Inc. Client-specified display services in a distributed computing environment
GB0011426D0 (en) 2000-05-11 2000-06-28 Charteris Limited A method for transforming documents written in different XML-based languages
US7496637B2 (en) 2000-05-31 2009-02-24 Oracle International Corp. Web service syndication system
US6990513B2 (en) 2000-06-22 2006-01-24 Microsoft Corporation Distributed computing services platform
AU2001271891A1 (en) 2000-07-07 2002-01-21 Criticalpoint Software Corporation Methods and system for generating and searching ontology databases
US6523036B1 (en) 2000-08-01 2003-02-18 Dantz Development Corporation Internet database system
US6708186B1 (en) 2000-08-14 2004-03-16 Oracle International Corporation Aggregating and manipulating dictionary metadata in a database system
US20020059566A1 (en) 2000-08-29 2002-05-16 Delcambre Lois M. Uni-level description of computer information and transformation of computer information between representation schemes
US6654734B1 (en) 2000-08-30 2003-11-25 International Business Machines Corporation System and method for query processing and optimization for XML repositories
AU2001290646A1 (en) 2000-09-08 2002-03-22 The Regents Of The University Of California Data source integration system and method
US6708161B2 (en) 2000-09-26 2004-03-16 I2 Technologies Us, Inc. System and method for selective database indexing
US6710753B2 (en) 2000-10-17 2004-03-23 Sun Micosystems, Inc. Multi-screen session mobility between terminal groups
US6912538B2 (en) 2000-10-20 2005-06-28 Kevin Stapel System and method for dynamic generation of structured documents
US6996566B1 (en) 2000-11-21 2006-02-07 International Business Machines Corporation Method and system for an object model with embedded metadata and mapping information
US6748583B2 (en) 2000-12-27 2004-06-08 International Business Machines Corporation Monitoring execution of an hierarchical visual program such as for debugging a message flow
US6983310B2 (en) 2000-12-29 2006-01-03 International Business Machines Corporation System and method for providing search capabilties on a wireless device
US6732109B2 (en) 2001-01-31 2004-05-04 The Eon Company Method and system for transferring information between a user interface and a database over a global information network
US7120702B2 (en) 2001-03-03 2006-10-10 International Business Machines Corporation System and method for transcoding web content for display by alternative client devices
US6847974B2 (en) 2001-03-26 2005-01-25 Us Search.Com Inc Method and apparatus for intelligent data assimilation
US6725231B2 (en) 2001-03-27 2004-04-20 Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. DICOM XML DTD/schema generator
GB0108070D0 (en) 2001-03-30 2001-05-23 British Telecomm Database management system
US6760734B1 (en) * 2001-05-09 2004-07-06 Bellsouth Intellectual Property Corporation Framework for storing metadata in a common access repository
US20060064666A1 (en) 2001-05-25 2006-03-23 Amaru Ruth M Business rules for configurable metamodels and enterprise impact analysis
US20050038629A1 (en) 2001-05-25 2005-02-17 Ruth Amaru Pricing of enterprise information resource management systems
US8412746B2 (en) 2001-05-25 2013-04-02 International Business Machines Corporation Method and system for federated querying of data sources
US7673282B2 (en) 2001-05-25 2010-03-02 International Business Machines Corporation Enterprise information unification
US20040093559A1 (en) 2001-05-25 2004-05-13 Ruth Amaru Web client for viewing and interrogating enterprise data semantically
US20030163450A1 (en) 2001-05-25 2003-08-28 Joram Borenstein Brokering semantics between web services
US20020194201A1 (en) 2001-06-05 2002-12-19 Wilbanks John Thompson Systems, methods and computer program products for integrating biological/chemical databases to create an ontology network
MXPA03011976A (en) 2001-06-22 2005-07-01 Nervana Inc System and method for knowledge retrieval, management, delivery and presentation.
US7721193B2 (en) 2001-10-18 2010-05-18 Bea Systems, Inc. System and method for implementing a schema object model in application integration
WO2003058375A2 (en) 2001-10-26 2003-07-17 Zeosoft Corporation Development, management of distributed clients and servers
GB2399665A (en) 2003-03-18 2004-09-22 British Telecomm Access control to shared resources
US20040260576A1 (en) 2003-06-20 2004-12-23 Dongwen Wang Guideline execution task ontology (GETO)
US7739223B2 (en) 2003-08-29 2010-06-15 Microsoft Corporation Mapping architecture for arbitrary data models
US7328209B2 (en) 2004-08-11 2008-02-05 Oracle International Corporation System for ontology-based semantic matching in a relational database system
EP1839209A2 (en) 2004-12-29 2007-10-03 Aol Llc Routing queries to information sources and sorting and filtering query results

Patent Citations (99)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
US5295242A (en) * 1990-11-02 1994-03-15 Consilium, Inc. Apparatus and method for viewing relationships in a factory management system
US5499371A (en) * 1993-07-21 1996-03-12 Persistence Software, Inc. Method and apparatus for automatic generation of object oriented code for mapping relational data to objects
US5627979A (en) * 1994-07-18 1997-05-06 International Business Machines Corporation System and method for providing a graphical user interface for mapping and accessing objects in data stores
US5838965A (en) * 1994-11-10 1998-11-17 Cadis, Inc. Object oriented database management system
US5873093A (en) * 1994-12-07 1999-02-16 Next Software, Inc. Method and apparatus for mapping objects to a data source
US6704744B1 (en) * 1994-12-07 2004-03-09 Next Computer, Inc. Method and apparatus for mapping objects to multiple tables of a database
US6374252B1 (en) * 1995-04-24 2002-04-16 I2 Technologies Us, Inc. Modeling of object-oriented database structures, translation to relational database structures, and dynamic searches thereon
US6633869B1 (en) * 1995-05-09 2003-10-14 Intergraph Corporation Managing object relationships using an object repository
US6292804B1 (en) * 1995-05-09 2001-09-18 Intergraph Corporation Object relationship management system
US5768580A (en) * 1995-05-31 1998-06-16 Oracle Corporation Methods and apparatus for dynamic classification of discourse
US5710917A (en) * 1995-06-07 1998-01-20 International Business Machines Corporation Method for deriving data mappings and data aliases
US6192365B1 (en) * 1995-07-20 2001-02-20 Novell, Inc. Transaction log management in a disconnectable computer and network
US5734887A (en) * 1995-09-29 1998-03-31 International Business Machines Corporation Method and apparatus for logical data access to a physical relational database
US5970490A (en) * 1996-11-05 1999-10-19 Xerox Corporation Integration platform for heterogeneous databases
US20080140549A1 (en) * 1997-01-06 2008-06-12 Jeff Scott Eder Automated method of and system for identifying, measuring and enhancing categories of value for a value chain
US5995756A (en) * 1997-02-14 1999-11-30 Inprise Corporation System for internet-based delivery of computer applications
US6035342A (en) * 1997-03-19 2000-03-07 Microsoft Corporation Method and computer program product for implementing object relationships
US5905987A (en) * 1997-03-19 1999-05-18 Microsoft Corporation Method, data structure, and computer program product for object state storage in a repository
US5857197A (en) * 1997-03-20 1999-01-05 Thought Inc. System and method for accessing data stores as objects
US6424974B1 (en) * 1997-03-31 2002-07-23 International Business Machines Corporation Storing P-code in a database
US5937409A (en) * 1997-07-25 1999-08-10 Oracle Corporation Integrating relational databases in an object oriented environment
US6301584B1 (en) * 1997-08-21 2001-10-09 Home Information Services, Inc. System and method for retrieving entities and integrating data
US6014666A (en) * 1997-10-28 2000-01-11 Microsoft Corporation Declarative and programmatic access control of component-based server applications using roles
US6289338B1 (en) * 1997-12-15 2001-09-11 Manning & Napier Information Services Database analysis using a probabilistic ontology
US6233586B1 (en) * 1998-04-01 2001-05-15 International Business Machines Corp. Federated searching of heterogeneous datastores using a federated query object
US6578046B2 (en) * 1998-04-01 2003-06-10 International Business Machines Corporation Federated searches of heterogeneous datastores using a federated datastore object
US6199059B1 (en) * 1998-04-22 2001-03-06 International Computex, Inc. System and method for classifying and retrieving information with virtual object hierarchy
US6526416B1 (en) * 1998-06-30 2003-02-25 Microsoft Corporation Compensating resource managers
US6424973B1 (en) * 1998-07-24 2002-07-23 Jarg Corporation Search system and method based on multiple ontologies
US6343265B1 (en) * 1998-07-28 2002-01-29 International Business Machines Corporation System and method for mapping a design model to a common repository with context preservation
US20020059187A1 (en) * 1998-09-21 2002-05-16 Microsoft Corporation Internal database validation
US6219654B1 (en) * 1998-11-02 2001-04-17 International Business Machines Corporation Method, system and program product for performing cost analysis of an information technology implementation
US6718320B1 (en) * 1998-11-02 2004-04-06 International Business Machines Corporation Schema mapping system and method
US6498795B1 (en) * 1998-11-18 2002-12-24 Nec Usa Inc. Method and apparatus for active information discovery and retrieval
US6327593B1 (en) * 1998-12-23 2001-12-04 Unisys Corporation Automated system and method for capturing and managing user knowledge within a search system
US6892238B2 (en) * 1999-01-27 2005-05-10 International Business Machines Corporation Aggregating and analyzing information about content requested in an e-commerce web environment to determine conversion rates
US6591272B1 (en) * 1999-02-25 2003-07-08 Tricoron Networks, Inc. Method and apparatus to make and transmit objects from a database on a server computer to a client computer
US6711585B1 (en) * 1999-06-15 2004-03-23 Kanisa Inc. System and method for implementing a knowledge management system
US6874146B1 (en) * 1999-06-30 2005-03-29 Unisys Corporation Metadata driven system for effecting extensible data interchange based on universal modeling language (UML), meta object facility (MOF) and extensible markup language (XML) standards
US6651244B1 (en) * 1999-07-26 2003-11-18 Cisco Technology, Inc. System and method for determining program complexity
US6633878B1 (en) * 1999-07-30 2003-10-14 Accenture Llp Initializing an ecommerce database framework
US7200563B1 (en) * 1999-08-20 2007-04-03 Acl International Inc. Ontology-driven information system
US20070038500A1 (en) * 1999-08-20 2007-02-15 ACL International, Inc., Ontology-driven information system
US6560595B1 (en) * 1999-11-15 2003-05-06 Novell, Inc. Operator for correlated predicates in a query
US6728692B1 (en) * 1999-12-23 2004-04-27 Hewlett-Packard Company Apparatus for a multi-modal ontology engine
US6978257B1 (en) * 2000-01-31 2005-12-20 International Business Machines Corporation System and method for measuring and pricing midrange computer server outsourcing services
US6497943B1 (en) * 2000-02-14 2002-12-24 International Business Machines Corporation Surface metal balancing to reduce chip carrier flexing
US7315849B2 (en) * 2000-02-28 2008-01-01 Hyperroll Israel, Ltd. Enterprise-wide data-warehouse with integrated data aggregation engine
US6687873B1 (en) * 2000-03-09 2004-02-03 Electronic Data Systems Corporation Method and system for reporting XML data from a legacy computer system
US6311194B1 (en) * 2000-03-15 2001-10-30 Taalee, Inc. System and method for creating a semantic web and its applications in browsing, searching, profiling, personalization and advertising
US6742054B1 (en) * 2000-04-07 2004-05-25 Vitria Technology, Inc. Method of executing a data transformation specification
US20030110055A1 (en) * 2000-04-10 2003-06-12 Chau Bang Thinh Electronic catalogue
US7111297B1 (en) * 2000-05-02 2006-09-19 Microsoft Corporation Methods and architectures for resource management
US6772031B1 (en) * 2000-05-30 2004-08-03 International Business Machines Corporation Method of, system for, and computer program product for providing a job monitor
US6957214B2 (en) * 2000-06-23 2005-10-18 The Johns Hopkins University Architecture for distributed database information access
US6513059B1 (en) * 2000-08-24 2003-01-28 Cambira Corporation Adaptive collaborative intelligent network system
US20030050932A1 (en) * 2000-09-01 2003-03-13 Pace Charles P. System and method for transactional deployment of J2EE web components, enterprise java bean components, and application data over multi-tiered computer networks
US7024425B2 (en) * 2000-09-07 2006-04-04 Oracle International Corporation Method and apparatus for flexible storage and uniform manipulation of XML data in a relational database system
US6871204B2 (en) * 2000-09-07 2005-03-22 Oracle International Corporation Apparatus and method for mapping relational data and metadata to XML
US20020059183A1 (en) * 2000-09-25 2002-05-16 Li-Wen Chen Method and system for managing event attributes
US20050197926A1 (en) * 2000-09-26 2005-09-08 I2 Technologies Us, Inc. System and method for identifying a product
US6640231B1 (en) * 2000-10-06 2003-10-28 Ontology Works, Inc. Ontology for database design and application development
US7027974B1 (en) * 2000-10-27 2006-04-11 Science Applications International Corporation Ontology-based parser for natural language processing
US6999956B2 (en) * 2000-11-16 2006-02-14 Ward Mullins Dynamic object-driven database manipulation and mapping system
US20020099738A1 (en) * 2000-11-22 2002-07-25 Grant Hugh Alexander Automated web access for back-end enterprise systems
US20020107844A1 (en) * 2000-12-08 2002-08-08 Keon-Hoe Cha Information generation and retrieval method based on standardized format of sentence structure and semantic structure and system using the same
US6532471B1 (en) * 2000-12-11 2003-03-11 International Business Machines Corporation Interface repository browser and editor
US7302410B1 (en) * 2000-12-22 2007-11-27 Demandtec, Inc. Econometric optimization engine
US7278164B2 (en) * 2001-01-05 2007-10-02 Revit Technology Corporation Software usage/procurement management
US6792580B2 (en) * 2001-01-31 2004-09-14 Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba Method and computer program product for software/hardware language model conversion
US6397232B1 (en) * 2001-02-02 2002-05-28 Acer Inc. Method and system for translating the format of the content of document file
US20020169842A1 (en) * 2001-04-02 2002-11-14 Centegy Corporation Method and system for facilitating the integration of a plurality of dissimilar systems
US6711579B2 (en) * 2001-04-20 2004-03-23 Sree Ayyanar Spinning And Weaving Mills Limited Data storage schema independent programming for data retrieval using semantic bridge
US20030036917A1 (en) * 2001-04-25 2003-02-20 Metallect Corporation Service provision system and method
US20030191608A1 (en) * 2001-04-30 2003-10-09 Anderson Mark Stephen Data processing and observation system
US20030120665A1 (en) * 2001-05-25 2003-06-26 Joshua Fox Run-time architecture for enterprise integration with transformation generation
US20040093344A1 (en) * 2001-05-25 2004-05-13 Ben Berger Method and system for mapping enterprise data assets to a semantic information model
US20090077051A1 (en) * 2001-05-25 2009-03-19 International Business Machines Corporation Data Query and Location Through a Central Ontology Model
US7475084B2 (en) * 2001-05-25 2009-01-06 International Business Machines Corporation Data query and location through a central ontology model
US20030163597A1 (en) * 2001-05-25 2003-08-28 Hellman Ziv Zalman Method and system for collaborative ontology modeling
US20030101170A1 (en) * 2001-05-25 2003-05-29 Joseph Edelstein Data query and location through a central ontology model
US20020194154A1 (en) * 2001-06-05 2002-12-19 Levy Joshua Lerner Systems, methods and computer program products for integrating biological/chemical databases using aliases
US20030018616A1 (en) * 2001-06-05 2003-01-23 Wilbanks John Thompson Systems, methods and computer program products for integrating databases to create an ontology network
US6778990B2 (en) * 2001-07-27 2004-08-17 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. Dynamic component activation method using a relational database as the repository for registration information
US20050267871A1 (en) * 2001-08-14 2005-12-01 Insightful Corporation Method and system for extending keyword searching to syntactically and semantically annotated data
US20030233224A1 (en) * 2001-08-14 2003-12-18 Insightful Corporation Method and system for enhanced data searching
US7096224B2 (en) * 2001-09-28 2006-08-22 Oracle International Corporation Mechanism for mapping XML schemas to object-relational database systems
US20030172368A1 (en) * 2001-12-26 2003-09-11 Elizabeth Alumbaugh System and method for autonomously generating heterogeneous data source interoperability bridges based on semantic modeling derived from self adapting ontology
US20030167445A1 (en) * 2002-03-04 2003-09-04 Hong Su Method and system of document transformation between a source extensible markup language (XML) schema and a target XML schema
US20040054690A1 (en) * 2002-03-08 2004-03-18 Hillerbrand Eric T. Modeling and using computer resources over a heterogeneous distributed network using semantic ontologies
US20040010491A1 (en) * 2002-06-28 2004-01-15 Markus Riedinger User interface framework
US20040117346A1 (en) * 2002-09-20 2004-06-17 Kilian Stoffel Computer-based method and apparatus for repurposing an ontology
US20040220893A1 (en) * 2002-11-20 2004-11-04 Radar Networks, Inc. User interface for managing semantic objects
US20050060371A1 (en) * 2003-09-15 2005-03-17 Cohen Mitchell A. Method and system for providing a common collaboration framework accessible from within multiple applications
US20050080656A1 (en) * 2003-10-10 2005-04-14 Unicru, Inc. Conceptualization of job candidate information
US20050138173A1 (en) * 2003-12-22 2005-06-23 Ha Young G. Ontology-based service discovery system and method for ad hoc networks
US20050251533A1 (en) * 2004-03-16 2005-11-10 Ascential Software Corporation Migrating data integration processes through use of externalized metadata representations
US7254589B2 (en) * 2004-05-21 2007-08-07 International Business Machines Corporation Apparatus and method for managing and inferencing contextural relationships accessed by the context engine to answer queries received from the application program interface, wherein ontology manager is operationally coupled with a working memory
US20060218177A1 (en) * 2005-03-25 2006-09-28 Yuan-Chi Chang System and method for storing and retrieving data through an inferencing-enabled metadata system

Cited By (69)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
US20070032855A1 (en) * 1998-01-14 2007-02-08 Advanced Stent Technologies, Inc. Extendible stent apparatus
US8548938B2 (en) 2001-05-25 2013-10-01 International Business Machines Corporation Business rules for configurable metamodels and enterprise impact analysis
US8412746B2 (en) 2001-05-25 2013-04-02 International Business Machines Corporation Method and system for federated querying of data sources
US20050022160A1 (en) * 2002-06-17 2005-01-27 Adaptik Corporation Method and apparatus for creating an adaptive application
US7451403B1 (en) * 2002-12-20 2008-11-11 Rage Frameworks, Inc. System and method for developing user interfaces purely by modeling as meta data in software application
US7343377B1 (en) * 2003-07-07 2008-03-11 Unisys Corporation Method and system for verifying the integrity of a database
US20050021537A1 (en) * 2003-07-22 2005-01-27 Rainer Brendle Self-describing business objects
US7533103B2 (en) * 2003-07-22 2009-05-12 Sap Ag Self-describing business objects
US20050198385A1 (en) * 2004-01-30 2005-09-08 Aust Brian S. System and method for generating a consistent user name-space on networked devices
US8108483B2 (en) * 2004-01-30 2012-01-31 Microsoft Corporation System and method for generating a consistent user namespace on networked devices
US20070106797A1 (en) * 2005-09-29 2007-05-10 Nortel Networks Limited Mission goal statement to policy statement translation
US20070294267A1 (en) * 2006-06-16 2007-12-20 Business Objects, S.A. Apparatus and method for processing of COBOL nested data record schemas
US20070294677A1 (en) * 2006-06-16 2007-12-20 Business Objects, S.A. Apparatus and method for processing cobol data record schemas having disparate formats
US7640261B2 (en) 2006-06-16 2009-12-29 Business Objects Software Ltd. Apparatus and method for processing data corresponding to multiple COBOL data record schemas
US20070294246A1 (en) * 2006-06-16 2007-12-20 Microsoft Corporation Associating metadata on a per-user basis
US8656374B2 (en) 2006-06-16 2014-02-18 Business Objects Software Ltd. Processing cobol data record schemas having disparate formats
US7987159B2 (en) 2006-09-15 2011-07-26 Microsoft Corporation Detecting and managing changes in business data integration solutions
US20080133594A1 (en) * 2006-12-01 2008-06-05 Goldman, Sachs & Co. Application Directory
US10152687B2 (en) * 2006-12-01 2018-12-11 Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC Application directory
US20080189265A1 (en) * 2007-02-06 2008-08-07 Microsoft Corporation Techniques to manage vocabulary terms for a taxonomy system
US20090030880A1 (en) * 2007-07-27 2009-01-29 Boris Melamed Model-Based Analysis
US20090037360A1 (en) * 2007-08-01 2009-02-05 International Business Machines Corporation Auto-Triggered Incremental Execution of Object Business Rules in Database Applications
US9286368B2 (en) 2007-10-31 2016-03-15 Microsoft Technology Licensing, Llc Linking framework for information technology management
US20090112939A1 (en) * 2007-10-31 2009-04-30 Microsoft Corporation Linking framework for information technology management
US8190562B2 (en) * 2007-10-31 2012-05-29 Microsoft Corporation Linking framework for information technology management
US8666960B2 (en) 2008-06-26 2014-03-04 Microsoft Corporation Schema-based data transfer between a data-based application and a document application
US20090327343A1 (en) * 2008-06-26 2009-12-31 Microsoft Corporation Schema-based data transfer between a data-based application and a document application
US20120084257A1 (en) * 2008-10-06 2012-04-05 Teradata Us, Inc. Master data management versioning
US9098538B2 (en) * 2008-10-06 2015-08-04 Teradata Us, Inc. Master data management versioning
US20120042299A1 (en) * 2008-10-21 2012-02-16 Oswald Perrin Model transformation unit
US8826225B2 (en) * 2008-10-21 2014-09-02 Accenture Global Services Limited Model transformation unit
US20100274823A1 (en) * 2009-04-23 2010-10-28 Sailesh Sathish Method, apparatus and computer program product for providing an adaptive context model framework
WO2010122420A1 (en) * 2009-04-23 2010-10-28 Nokia Corporation Method, apparatus and computer program product for providing an adaptive context model framework
US8756258B2 (en) 2009-06-10 2014-06-17 International Business Machines Corporation Generating references to reusable code in a schema
US20100318574A1 (en) * 2009-06-10 2010-12-16 International Business Machines Corporation Generating references to reusable code in a schema
US8135757B2 (en) 2009-06-10 2012-03-13 International Business Machines Corporation Generating references to reusable code in a schema
US20110078660A1 (en) * 2009-09-29 2011-03-31 International Business Machines Corporation Metamodeling Contextual Navigation of Computer Software Applications
US8843896B2 (en) 2009-09-29 2014-09-23 International Business Machines Corporation Metamodeling contextual navigation of computer software applications
US8826232B2 (en) 2009-09-29 2014-09-02 International Business Machines Corporation Metamodeling contextual navigation of computer software applications
US8719770B2 (en) * 2010-09-09 2014-05-06 International Business Machines Corporation Verifying programming artifacts generated from ontology artifacts or models
US20120066661A1 (en) * 2010-09-09 2012-03-15 International Business Machines Corporation Verifying programming artifacts generated from ontology artifacts or models
WO2012057382A1 (en) * 2010-10-29 2012-05-03 한국과학기술정보연구원 Ontology-based method for managing the integration of metadata
US20150082272A1 (en) * 2012-01-05 2015-03-19 International Business Machines Corporation Multiple Architecture Viewpoints In Single Unified Modeling Language (UML) Model
US9372669B2 (en) * 2012-01-05 2016-06-21 International Business Machines Corporation Multiple architecture viewpoints in single unified modeling language (UML) model
US20130332423A1 (en) * 2012-06-12 2013-12-12 Accenture Global Services Limited Data lineage tracking
US9659042B2 (en) * 2012-06-12 2017-05-23 Accenture Global Services Limited Data lineage tracking
US9239854B2 (en) 2013-03-15 2016-01-19 Sas Institute Inc. Multi-domain impact analysis using object relationships
US10091158B2 (en) * 2013-08-29 2018-10-02 Mastercard International Incorporated Systems and methods for resolving data inconsistencies between domain name systems
US9680790B2 (en) 2013-08-29 2017-06-13 Mastercard International Incorporated Systems and methods for resolving data inconsistencies between domain name systems
US9830142B2 (en) 2013-09-13 2017-11-28 Microsoft Technology Licensing, Llc Automatic installation of selected updates in multiple environments
US10268473B2 (en) 2013-09-13 2019-04-23 Microsoft Technology Licensing, Llc Update installer with process impact analysis
US10026064B2 (en) 2013-09-13 2018-07-17 Microsoft Technology Licensing, Llc Automatically recommending updates based on stored lifecycle information
US9626176B2 (en) * 2013-09-13 2017-04-18 Microsoft Technology Licensing, Llc Update installer with technical impact analysis
US20150082291A1 (en) * 2013-09-13 2015-03-19 Microsoft Corporation Update installer with technical impact analysis
US9665359B2 (en) 2013-09-13 2017-05-30 Microsoft Technology Licensing, Llc Automatically resolving conflicts after installation of selected updates in a computer system
US9703543B2 (en) 2013-09-13 2017-07-11 Microsoft Technology Licensing, Llc Update installer with process impact analysis
US20150187103A1 (en) * 2013-12-26 2015-07-02 International Business Machines Corporation Obscured relationship data within a graph
US9613446B2 (en) * 2013-12-26 2017-04-04 International Business Machines Corporation Obscured relationship data within a graph
US9607415B2 (en) * 2013-12-26 2017-03-28 International Business Machines Corporation Obscured relationship data within a graph
US20150187104A1 (en) * 2013-12-26 2015-07-02 International Business Machines Corporation Obscured relationship data within a graph
US10275221B2 (en) * 2015-03-06 2019-04-30 Cisco Technology, Inc. Systems and methods for generating data visualization applications
US9798523B2 (en) * 2015-06-11 2017-10-24 Electronics And Telecommunications Research Institute Method for generating workflow model and method and apparatus for executing workflow model
US10135913B2 (en) * 2015-06-17 2018-11-20 Tata Consultancy Services Limited Impact analysis system and method
US20160373313A1 (en) * 2015-06-17 2016-12-22 Tata Consultancy Services Limited Impact analysis system and method
US10127386B2 (en) * 2016-05-12 2018-11-13 Synopsys, Inc. Systems and methods for adaptive analysis of software
US10133649B2 (en) * 2016-05-12 2018-11-20 Synopsys, Inc. System and methods for model-based analysis of software
US10489384B2 (en) * 2016-11-09 2019-11-26 Ab Initio Technology Llc Systems and methods for determining relationships among data elements
US11226957B2 (en) 2016-11-09 2022-01-18 Ab Initio Technology Llc Systems and methods for determining relationships among data elements
CN114911773A (en) * 2022-05-20 2022-08-16 年华数据科技有限公司 Universal meta-model design method

Also Published As

Publication number Publication date
US20120215592A1 (en) 2012-08-23
US8548938B2 (en) 2013-10-01

Similar Documents

Publication Publication Date Title
US8548938B2 (en) Business rules for configurable metamodels and enterprise impact analysis
US7673282B2 (en) Enterprise information unification
US8412549B2 (en) Analyzing business data for planning applications
US20040093559A1 (en) Web client for viewing and interrogating enterprise data semantically
US7577934B2 (en) Framework for modeling and providing runtime behavior for business software applications
US7596416B1 (en) Project management tool
US7386578B2 (en) Associations between duplicate master data objects
US8234308B2 (en) Deliver application services through business object views
US8280924B2 (en) Object-relational mapping with dynamic relational schemas
US7730446B2 (en) Software business process model
US7174533B2 (en) Method, system, and program for translating a class schema in a source language to a target language
US20070203923A1 (en) Schema mapping and data transformation on the basis of a conceptual model
US7370316B2 (en) Mining model versioning
US20070180424A1 (en) Device, system and method for accelerated modeling
US7505991B2 (en) Semantic model development and deployment
WO2000075849A2 (en) Method and apparatus for data access to heterogeneous data sources
US20220269702A1 (en) Intelligent annotation of entity-relationship data models
US20090112570A1 (en) Declarative model interpretation
US8140594B2 (en) Advanced message mapping with sub-object key mapping
Ballard et al. IBM infosphere streams: accelerating deployments with analytic accelerators
Gluchowski et al. A modeling tool for multidimensional data using the adapt notation
Nagel Enterprise Data Modeling Using XML Schema
Polák et al. Data and query adaptation using DaemonX
US11928096B2 (en) Systems and methods using generic database search models
Yao et al. Using ISO 10303 data standard and XML standard web technology to enable ISO 9000 document management

Legal Events

Date Code Title Description
AS Assignment

Owner name: UNICORN SOLUTIONS, INC., NEW YORK

Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNORS:AMARU, RUTH M.;FOX, JOSHUA;HALBERSTADT, BENJAMIN;AND OTHERS;REEL/FRAME:017100/0252;SIGNING DATES FROM 20051031 TO 20051109

AS Assignment

Owner name: 2006 TRIDENT COMPANY,MASSACHUSETTS

Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNOR:UNICORN SOLUTIONS, INC.;REEL/FRAME:018012/0908

Effective date: 20060505

Owner name: 2006 TRIDENT COMPANY, MASSACHUSETTS

Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNOR:UNICORN SOLUTIONS, INC.;REEL/FRAME:018012/0908

Effective date: 20060505

AS Assignment

Owner name: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION,NEW YO

Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNOR:2006 TRIDENT COMPANY, INC.;REEL/FRAME:018627/0913

Effective date: 20061117

Owner name: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION, NEW Y

Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNOR:2006 TRIDENT COMPANY, INC.;REEL/FRAME:018627/0913

Effective date: 20061117

STCB Information on status: application discontinuation

Free format text: ABANDONED -- FAILURE TO RESPOND TO AN OFFICE ACTION