Data processing: database and file management or data structures – Database design – Data structure types
Reexamination Certificate
1999-04-22
2003-02-25
Alam, Hosain T. (Department: 2172)
Data processing: database and file management or data structures
Database design
Data structure types
C707S793000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06526412
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Technical Field
This invention generally relates to data accessing objects that use criteria to reference a value or element, such as in object-oriented software frameworks or databases. More specifically, this invention relates to an adapter key that references a value and that dynamically loads criteria from another object to reduce the amount of total criteria necessary to access and update the referenced value.
2. Background Art
Creating software is a very time consuming process. Planning the organization of the software components, planning the functionality of each component, coding all components, and then debugging each component and the interactions between components can be an extremely long process.
Because of the struggle with software, many enterprises buy “off-the-shelf” software instead of creating their own. For these enterprises, this is this is an admirable solution to the problems associated with creating software because someone else (the software vendor) actually creates, debugs, and updates the software. The enterprise merely uses the software. However, sometimes off-the-shelf software does not provide all of the functionality that an enterprise needs.
Today, enterprises that are lacking some functionality or simply want more control over applications have begun to realize that object-oriented frameworks can provide them with an easy way to create their own software packages that are specific to their situations. Object-oriented frameworks combine the benefits of objects (easy maintenance, upgrades, and extensions) with the benefits of a pre-built, related group of objects that provide specific functionality. Because frameworks are a reusable set or collection of classes that work together to provide a commonly needed function, much of the creation and debugging of the software has been done. The enterprise need only add the specific functionality not provided by the framework. This dramatically reduces coding and debugging time. Thus, frameworks provide enterprises with what they want-software that is easily maintained, upgradable, easily written, and specific to their situation-while reducing the time necessary to create this software.
Similarly, enterprises have also found databases to be easily adapted to support their needs. Databases allow a user to access information, and databases can be programmed for the particular enterprise's uses. Object-oriented databases are now also popular, due to the benefits of object-oriented programming. The underlying software that supports retrieval of objects or information has already been developed and thoroughly tested in databases; the enterprise need only add their interface to the database. Thus, databases provide easily adaptable accesses to information.
While object-oriented frameworks and databases provide many benefits, there are certain situations where the performance of the framework or database is less than ideal. This is particularly true when using one object that uses other objects (for clarity, these objects will be called “sub-objects”) to access a value that is “within” other objects in the framework or within the database. These “data accessing” objects point to or reference a value by using criteria determined by sub-objects. In other words, the data accessing object can be used to access and update the value pointed to by the data accessing object and determined by the criteria. If the criteria in the sub-objects change, a different value may be accessed. When updating a value, a data accessing object that references the value is passed to an object in the framework or to a database. The object in the framework or the database must then determine if the value is within itself and able to be updated. To do this, the object in the framework or the database generally compares the criteria in the data accessing object to criteria that determine if the value is within the framework or database. In this manner, the object in the framework or the database then can determine if they have the value and can update the value.
Before updating a value, the data accessing object creates, initializes, and populates all sub-objects (which contain criteria through which the correct value is pointed to or chosen). Furthermore, the data accessing object might have to determine the criteria from additional objects and use it to populate the sub-objects. Thus, before the value can be accessed, the data accessing object must be created and initialized, the sub-objects must be created and initialized, and the criteria must be determined and used to populate the sub-objects.
In certain cases, all of these sub-objects and their criteria may be necessary to access the value. For example, if the balance of a very simple financial account is desired, the only sub-object necessary might be the account number object or data. This account number object then points to, or allows access to, the account balance. These sub-objects and their criteria may also be needed when accessing very specific values. For instance, if a multinational car dealership wants to know the number of cars having a certain engine size that is in a specific type of red car on the new car lot of its only dealership in Germany, all of the sub-objects needed to access this value will be needed.
In many instances, however, much of this criteria is unnecessary. In the account example, while the account number itself is necessary to access the account balance, all of the other criteria about the account (date opened, date balanced, number of entries, etc. ) is usually superfluous. Similarly, if the multinational dealership simply wants to know how many cars the Germany dealership has, the Germany dealership is really the only necessary object. All of the other criteria are extraneous.
Inefficiencies arise in these situations because all of the sub-objects (that contain the criteria) are created, initialized and populated (with criteria determined from another object) during creation of the data access object that is being used to access and update a value. For instance, if the number of red cars in Germany is being updated, a data access object that points to this value will be created. This data access object is compared to the database or framework object to see if the number of red cars in Germany needs to be updated. If the database is strictly a database of cars in America, then the number of red cars in Germany is irrelevant. Regardless, when creating the data access object that informs the database or framework object which value is to be updated, the entire data access object, including all of its sub-objects, is created and initialized.
Many of the sub-objects, however, may not be necessary to access the desired value. If all one cares about is the number of red cars in Germany, then all of the other criteria associated with the Germany dealership (how many employees, etc.) are really not needed. For a complex business application made of a framework or when updating multiple databases, creating all of the extra sub-objects that hold these extraneous criteria can be extremely time consuming and inefficient.
In addition, there are often many copies of the value that need to be updated. For instance, one object may point to the number of total cars owned by the previously discussed multinational dealership, another object may point to the number of cars owned by the German subsidiary, while still another object may point to the number of red cars owned by the German subsidiary. If the German subsidiary sold one red car, an update to the number of red cars owned by the German subsidiary will have a ripple effect through the other values. When updating these values, the framework or database accesses can experience even more inefficiencies. Many objects, such as databases, that have a copy of the value (or another value that is affected by the value) must first copy the data accessing object because they may change sub-objects. For example, if a criterion of the data accessing object is “red cars, ” the database ma
Carey James Edward
Sanders Philip James
Alam Hosain T.
International Business Machines - Corporation
Schmeiser Olsen & Watts
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