Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Distributed data processing – Client/server
Reexamination Certificate
2000-01-21
2003-12-30
Thompson, Marc D. (Department: 2142)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Distributed data processing
Client/server
C379S211010
Reexamination Certificate
active
06671715
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to an automatic real-time personalized intelligence network that actively delivers personalized and timely informational and transactional content from an OLAP-based system to individuals through use of a high-speed processing and output delivery system to email, pager, mobile phone, fax, telephone, personal digital assistants, wireless-access protocol (WAP) device and other terminal devices on a high-throughput basis. Users may subscribe to various channels of content and to specific services within each channel that are delivered when a predetermined condition occurs (e.g., based on a schedule, when an exception condition occurs, or in response to a specific initiation request), and the distributed output engine of the invention is scalable to service loads of a large number (e.g. millions) of subscribers.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENION
Information is most useful when it is delivered to the right person at the right time. Delivery of the right information to the right person has been a problem that many businesses have attempted to solve over the years. Indeed, an entire industry of decision support technology exists to deliver information to members of a business based on massive amounts of data collected about the businesses. While many such systems exist, most are implemented for delivery of information to businesses and not to individuals. These systems also usually require that a user log-in to the system to seek out information. If information of interest changes rapidly, users must continuously log-on to the system to check for updated information.
Decision support systems have been developed to efficiently retrieve selected information from data warehouses. One type of decision support system is known as an on-line analytical processing system. In general, OLAP systems analyze the data from a number of different perspectives and support complex analyses against large input data sets. There are at least three different types of OLAP architectures—ROLAP, MOLAP, and HOLAP. ROLAP (“Relational On-Line Analytical Processing”) systems are systems that use a dynamic server connected to a relational database system. Multidimensional OLAP (“MOLAP”) utilizes a proprietary multidimensional database (“MDDB”) to provide OLAP analyses. The main premise of this architecture is that data must be stored multi-dimensionally to be viewed multi-dimensionally. A HOLAP (“Hybrid On-Line Analytical Processing”) system is a hybrid of these two. Each of these types of OLAP systems are typically client-server systems. The OLAP engine resides on the server side and a module is typically provided at a client-side to enable users to input queries and report requests to the OLAP engine. Many current client-side modules are typically stand alone software modules that are loaded on client-side computer systems. These systems require that a user must learn how to operate the client-side software module in order to initiate queries and generate reports.
An OLAP product developed by MicroStrategy, known as MicroStrategy Broadcaster,™ leverages this decision support technology for automatic delivery of reports based on database contents. MicroStrategy Broadcaster is an OLAP based system that provides businesses and other users with the ability to set up “services” to which participants may subscribe. The service provides content based on data in a database, such as a data warehouse, and may be personalized to users tastes. For example, while a service, may be generated for stock in the warehouse of a company, different sales managers may only want to know the stock for a particular product line. Those sales managers may then personalize the report generated by MicroStrategy Broadcaster™ so that the report only includes information about the product line of interest.
Although some push technologies have been developed for automatically delivering content to users, most systems simply “dump” information about a particular subject without regard to users particular preferences or interests. Some such technologies are available on the World Wide Web and the Internet.
The World Wide Web and the Internet have provided an avenue for information delivery, but current Web-based systems still fail to adequately deliver the right information at the right time. One of the major problems with the World Wide Web is the requirement to utilize a computer and web-browser to access its contents. Although penetration of computers throughout the world has increased, that penetration is far from making information readily available to everyone wherever they happen to be.
Moreover, most computer users connect to the Web through a land line. Most users therefore do not have access to Web content when they are away from a land line. Although technology is being developed to enable World Wide Web access through other mediums, such as web-enabled personal digital assistants, for example, such technology require users to purchase new equipment to access this technology. Given the sparse penetration of personal digital assistants already, this technology does not satisfy the need for delivery of timely information.
Another system in use today is an interactive telephone system that enables users to interactively request information through a computerized interface. These systems require that the user call in to a central number to access the system and request information by stepping through various options in predefined menu choices. Such information may include accessing account information, movie times service requests, etc.
A problem with these systems is that the menu structure is typically set and not customized to a particular's users preferences or customized to the information available to that user. Therefore, a user may have to wade through a host of inapplicable options to get to the one or two options applicable to that user. Further, a user may be interested in particular information. With existing telephone call-in systems, that user has to input the same series of options each time they want to hear the results of that report. If the user desires to run that report frequently, the telephone input system described is a very time consuming and wasteful method of accessing that information. Also, if a particular user may only be interested in knowing if a particular value or set of values in the report has changed over a predetermined period of time, in such a system, the user would be required to initiate the report frequently and then scan through the new report to determine if the information has changed over the time period specified.
Further, reports may be extensive and may contain a large amount of information for a user to sort through each time a report is run. Therefore, the user may have to wait a long time for the report to be generated once they input the appropriate parameters for the report.
Therefore, existing systems do not provide a readily available medium for delivery of the right information at the right time or a system for delivering that information.
Moreover, the processing demands of collecting a variety of service feeds, storing and transmitting timely personalized intelligence are compounded with the addition of many subscribers, for instance numbering in the thousands or millions.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
This invention provides a system and method for generating, organizing and delivering-message content to a collection of subscribers via e-mail, voice mail and other media on a high volume, high throughput basis. The invention receives business, weather, news and other topical information from a variety or sources or feeds, collects that data, and combines it with other information for delivery over selected channels via distributed servers, such as by e-mail.
For instance, in one embodiment the invention may continuously collect financial markets information and pool those reports for rapid delivery over a group of data distribution servers, such as e-mail delivery servers. The data distribution servers are configured to deliver those report
Fishman Phillippa J.
Langseth Justin
Talwar Ajay
Hunton & Williams LLP
Microstrategy, Inc.
Thompson Marc D.
Vu Thong
LandOfFree
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