Data processing: database and file management or data structures – Database design – Data structure types
Reexamination Certificate
2001-06-27
2004-05-25
Metjahic, Safet (Department: 2171)
Data processing: database and file management or data structures
Database design
Data structure types
Reexamination Certificate
active
06742001
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to database management systems. More particularly, the invention is a computer-implemented method that allows data in different databases, which may have different formats and structures, to be shared without remodeling the data. The system and method provides for transforming one hierarchical data structure to another hierarchical data structure.
Information resources often comprise huge databases that must be searched in order to extract useful information. One example of this includes data found on global information networks. With the wealth of information available today, and its value to businesses, managing information effectively has become a priority. However, existing database technologies, including recent advances in database integration, are often constrained when interacting with multiple, voluminous data sources.
As a growing number of companies establish Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) relationships using a global communications network, such as the Internet, traditional data sharing among multiple large data sources has become increasingly problematic. Data required by businesses is often stored in multiple databases, or supplied by third party companies. Additionally, data sharing difficulties are often magnified as companies attempt to integrate internal and external databases. As a result, combining data from separate sources typically creates an expensive and time-consuming systems integration task.
A major problem in data exchange arises from attempting to apply data associated with one structure, to another data structure. Table 1 shows two differing hierarchical data structures. A hierarchical data structure usually contains root, interior and leaf nodes. Each node in the data structures may contain data, or the data may only be contained only in the lowest level nodes, referred to as leaf nodes.
TABLE 1
Structure A (with data)
Structure B (without data)
Suspect
Offender
Name
Identification
First = “John”
Name
Middle = “Q”
Address
Last = “Public”
StreetNum
Address
StreetName
Street = “123 Main”
City
City = “AnyTown”
State
State = “TX”
ZipCode
Zip = “02334”
In order to facilitate the exchange of data, current solutions include standards bodies and consortia that standardize data structure. Standards bodies like RosettaNet, BizTalk, OASIS, and ACORD attempt to standardize data so that it can be exchanged more easily. However, there are problems presented by these solutions. To participate in a consortium, all participants' data has to be modeled in the same manner. Additionally, consortia and standards bodies established to handle similar types of data often have different standards for specific industries. The adoption of standards is also slow, because businesses within each industry still modify data to fit their own company requirements. Hence, given the number of different consortia, standards, and industries, there is still a need for a standard means to exchange data and data structure between different data structures and databases, among companies of the same and different industries, and even among departments of the same companies.
One current approach to filling this need is to painstakingly map one field of data to another, in order to exchange the data with a “non-conformant” entity; that is, one that uses different data structure standards. This process must be repeated not only for every field but also for every different exchange. These solutions to the exchange problem are generally custom “hard-coded” solutions. An efficient, user-configurable method for sharing data between different data structures, by transforming one hierarchical data structure to another, is still lacking.
Technologies such as Structured Query language (SQL), Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) and Extensible Markup Language (XML) have been developed to facilitate data integration. As beneficial as these technologies may be, however, they have failed to address inherent differences in the structure and organization of databases, in addition to the contents. These differences are important, because the richness of the original structure often contributes to the value of its underlying data.
For example, when attempting to store the same type of data or object, such as a customer description, database designers may use different field names, formats, and structures. Fields contained in one database may not be used in another. Or data that is stored in a single field in one database may be stored in several fields in another. If understood and logically integrated, these disparities can provide valuable information, such as how a company gains competitive advantage based on its data structuring. Unfortunately, today's database technologies often cleanse the disparities out of data to make it conform to standards of form and structure. Examples include databases that are converted from one representation to another representation and expressed in XML, using its corresponding hierarchical structure.
Integrating data from multiple environments and formats into a single interoperable structure is particularly necessary to seamless B2B electronic commerce (e-Commerce), and XML enables data to look much more alike than any previous format. However, there are still problems with using XML to represent data. These problems fall into two major categories: 1.) dirty and naturally occurring data perplex XML searching and storage and 2.) data formats or data schemas in the original databases that offer competitive advantage or better reflect the true model of the business and its data, are sacrificed to standards consortia. This means that the database formats or schemas have to be fit into the consortia data standards, which requires a highly skilled technical staff to spend a large amount of time comparing one database schema to another. Moreover, the standards being used and developed to overcome these data exchange barriers sacrifice competitive advantage for interoperability. Today, businesses require both.
Conforming to industry standards may also raise another of other issues, such as intellectual property issues; the ability for data modeled to a specific consortium standard to communicate with other consortia that use a different model or standard; and the handling of legacy data in multiple formats.
SUMMARY
The present invention solves the aforementioned needs, by providing a system and method for data sharing, without requiring that the data be remodeled to fit a common format or convention. Data can be dynamically transformed from any hierarchical structure to any other, regardless of format.
The present invention is a method for sharing data between hierarchical databases, comprising defining, configuring and storing datatypes, defining, configuring and storing hierarchical data structures comprising the datatypes, establishing and storing a lineage for linking related datatypes into families, defining, configuring and storing measures of similarity and similarity match tolerances, defining, configuring and storing match strategies, transforming a source hierarchical data structure to a target hierarchical data structure by determining the similarity between the source and target data structure, and evaluating an effectiveness indicia of match strategies. The method may further comprise manually defining, configuring and storing mappings between datatype elements.
The present invention also provides a user-configurable “tree transformation” system and method that employs a step-by-step process of elimination to take the contents of one hierarchical data structure and apply them to a different structure. It allows for the use of a “dictionary” of common datatypes, which establishes a relationship hierarchy betw
Al-Hashemi Sana
Infoglide Corporation
Metjahic Safet
Taylor Russell & Russell, PC
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