Abstract:
The invention provides a configuration tool to allow a user to build a custom-selected data object hierarchy, for business intelligence or other purposes. Under conventional data storage technologies, the physical layout of the disk drive or other media has dictated what logical views and searches a user could run on the underlying data. For instance, levels could not be readily skipped or many-to-many data object relationships were difficult to maintain. In the invention, a user may select and connect a set of data objects into a hierarchy of their choosing, to permit desired reports and other manipulations on the data to be performed. The hierarchy may be edited, and entry points may be defined. Different levels of security may be applied to the different levels of the hierarchy. Multiple hierarchies or representations may be built for one database or other data source.

Description:
FIELD OF INVENTION 
     The invention relates to the field of data processing, and more particularly to a management tool to permit users of analytic engines and other information resources to custom structure a data schema for business intelligence and other purposes. 
     BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
     The deployment of large scale databases and other information resources has led to an increase in both the power and scope of business analytic tools at the disposal of business managers, government or academic officials and others. The data assets used in such data mining applications may typically be configured in a relational database management system (RDMS), for instance an OLAP-driven platform. 
     The data for such data platforms may be stored on a large-scale redundant array of independent disks (RAID) platform, on storage area networks (SANs), on optical, electronic or other media. On such platforms, the physical storage characteristics may, in part, dictate the data object structure of the data stored therein. 
     For instance, as illustrated in  FIG. 3 , a data object hierarchy in a conventional system may include a set of geographically-oriented data objects, illustrated as country, region, district, city and store. In some data storage platforms, such as large scale disk arrays or others, this descending hierarchy may correspond to physical records on a disk or other media, such that country records are located next to sectors for, or link by pointers to, region records. Other data structures and linkages are possible. However, in such conventional data storage, the ability to view the data is limited by that underlying physical or logical storage structure. 
     Thus, a sales manager or other person wishing to browse country records and proceed to view city-level data may not be able to do so, directly. Instead, he or she may have to descend through the intermediate levels of the hierarchy. Or, a user wishing to associate or aggregate sales records for individual cities and then total them for a country-wide comparison may not be able to do so, or not do so very readily, since the schema is arranged in a rigid fashion which does not lend itself to flexible navigation. 
     This problem of fixed hierarchies is exacerbated even further when the data objects are arranged not in a one-to-one relationship, but in a one-to-many or many-to-many network. For instance, the field for stores illustrated in  FIG. 3  may also point to a data object for both store type and market type. For instance, a large retailer may maintain separate automotive stores under the same brand, and the market for various stores may be divided, for instance, according to urban, suburban or other categories. Attempting to traverse these types of hierarchies to generate desired reports or other output may be difficult or impossible with existing technology. Other problems exist. 
     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
     The invention overcoming these and other problems in the art relates in one regard to a system and method for a user defined data object hierarchy, which permits a user to associate data objects into a hierarchy of their choosing, not limited to the data structures of the underlying physical storage. According to the invention, a configuration engine may allow a user to build a custom-selected data object hierarchy of their choosing, for business intelligence or other purposes, for instance to generate desired reports or other manipulations on the data. Amongst the data objects populating the data object hierarchy, one or more entry points may be defined from which views or reports on the data may begin. The data object hierarchy may be edited, and different levels of security may be applied to different levels of the hierarchy. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
       The invention will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which like elements are referenced with like numbers. 
         FIG. 1  is a block diagram illustrating an architecture for a system according to an embodiment of the invention. 
         FIG. 2  is a flowchart illustrating steps performed by a process utilizing a query engine according to an embodiment of the invention. 
         FIG. 3  is a block diagram illustrating a data object hierarchy according to a conventional data storage system. 
         FIG. 4  is a block diagram illustrating a configuration engine for selecting custom data object hierarchies according to an embodiment of the invention. 
         FIG. 5  is a block diagram illustrating a custom data object hierarchy which may be illustratively configured according to an embodiment of the invention. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS 
       FIG. 1  is a block diagram illustrating a system  100  by which a variety of data resources may be accessed for business analytic, report generation and other intelligence purposes according to an embodiment of the invention. According to a preferred embodiment, the system  100  may comprise an Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) decision support system (DSS). In particular,  FIG. 1  may comprise a portion of the MicroStrategy 7 or 7.1 platform which provides a preferred system in which the present invention may be implemented. 
     In general, through using the system  100  of the invention, analysts, managers and other users may query or interrogate a plurality of databases or database arrays to extract demographic, sales, and/or financial data and information and other patterns from records stored in such databases or database arrays to identify strategic trends. Those strategic trends may not be discernable without processing the queries and treating the results of the data extraction according to the techniques performed by the systems and methods of the invention. This is in part because the size and complexity of some data portfolios stored in such databases or database arrays may mask those trends. 
     In addition, system  100  may enable the creation of reports or services that are processed according to a schedule. Users may then subscribe to the service, provide personalization criteria and have the information automatically delivered to the user, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,154,766 to Yost et al., which is commonly assigned and hereby incorporated by reference. 
     As illustrated in  FIG. 1 , a business, a government or another user may access the resources of the system  100  using a user engine  102 . The user engine  102  may include a query input module  116  to accept a plurality of searches, queries or other requests, via a query box on a graphical user interface (GUI) or another similar interface. The user engine  102  may communicate with an analytical engine  104 . The analytical engine  104  may include a set of extensible modules to run a plurality of statistical analyses, to apply filtering criteria, to perform a neural net technique or another technique to condition and treat data extracted from data resources hosted in the system  100 , according to a query received from the user engine  102 . 
     The analytical engine  104  may communicate with a query engine  106 , which in turn interfaces to one or more data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  (where n is an arbitrary number). The data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  may include or interface to a relational database or another structured database stored on a hard disk, an optical disk, a solid state device or another similar storage media. When implemented as databases, the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  may include or interface to, for example, an Oracle™ relational database such as sold commercially by Oracle Corporation, an Informix™ database, a Database 2 (DB2) database, a Sybase™ database, or another data storage device or query format, platform or resource such as an OLAP format, a Standard Query Language (SQL) format, a storage area network (SAN), or a Microsoft Access™ database. It should be understood that while data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  are illustrated as a plurality of data storage devices, in some embodiments the data storage devices may be contained within a single database or another single resource. 
     Any of the user engine  102 , the analytical engine  104  and the query engine  106  or other resources of the system  100  may include or interface to or be supported by computing resources, such as one or more associated servers. When a server is employed for support, the server may include, for instance, a workstation running a Microsoft Windows™ NT™ operating system, a Windows™ 2000 operating system, a Unix operating system, a Linux operating system, a Xenix operating system, an IBM AIX™ operating system, a Hewlett-Packard UX™ operating system, a Novell Netware™ operating system, a Sun Microsystems Solaris™ operating system, an OS/2™ operating system, a BeOS™ operating system, a Macintosh operating system, an Apache platform, an OpenStep™ operating system, or another similar operating system or platform. According to one embodiment of the present invention, analytical engine  104  and query engine  106  may comprise elements of an intelligence server  103 . 
     The data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  may be supported by a server or another resource and may, in some embodiments, include redundancy, such as a redundant array of independent disks (RAID), for data protection. The storage capacity of any one or more of the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  may be of various sizes, from relatively small data sets to very large database (VLDB)-scale data sets, such as warehouses holding terabytes of data or more. The fields and types of data stored within the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  may also be diverse, and may include, for instance, financial, personal, news, marketing, technical, addressing, governmental, military, medical or other categories of data or information. 
     The query engine  106  may mediate one or more queries or information requests from those received from the user at the user engine  102  to parse, filter, format and otherwise process such queries to be submitted against the data contained in the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n . Thus, a user at the user engine  102  may submit a query requesting information in SQL format, or have the query translated to SQL format. The submitted query is then transmitted via the analytical engine  104  to the query engine  106 . The query engine  106  may determine, for instance, whether the transmitted query may be processed by one or more resources of the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  in its original format. If so, the query engine  106  may directly transmit the query to one or more of the resources of the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b . . .  108   n  for processing. 
     If the transmitted query cannot be processed in its original format, the query engine  106  may perform a translation of the query from an original syntax to a syntax compatible with one or more of the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  by invoking a syntax module  118  to conform the syntax of the query to standard SQL, DB2, Informix™, Sybase™ formats or to other data structures, syntax or logic. The query engine  106  may likewise parse the transmitted query to determine whether it includes any invalid formatting or to trap other errors included in the transmitted query, such as a request for sales data for a future year or other similar types of errors. Upon detecting an invalid or an unsupported query, the query engine  106  may pass an error message back to the user engine  102  to await further user input. 
     When a valid query such as a search request is received and conformed to a proper format, the query engine  106  may pass the query to one or more of the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   n  . . .  108   n  for processing. In some embodiments, the query may be processed for one or more hits against one or more databases in the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n . For example, a manager of a restaurant chain, a retail vendor or another similar user may submit a query to view gross sales made by the restaurant chain or retail vendor in the State of New York for the year 1999. The data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  may be searched for one or more fields corresponding to the query to generate a set of results  114 . 
     Although illustrated in connection with each data storage device  108  in  FIG. 1 , the results  114  may be generated from querying any one or more of the databases of the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n , depending on which of the data resources produce hits from processing the search query. In some embodiments of the system  100  of the invention, the results  114  may be maintained on one or more of the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  to permit one or more refinements, iterated queries, joinders or other operations to be performed on the data included in the results  114  before passing the information included in the results  114  back to the analytical engine  104  and other elements of the system  100 . 
     When any such refinements or other operations are concluded, the results  114  may be transmitted to the analytical engine  104  via the query engine  106 . The analytical engine  104  may then perform statistical, logical or other operations on the results  114  for presentation to the user. For instance, the user may submit a query asking which of its retail stores in the State of New York reached $1 M in sales at the earliest time in the year 1999. Or, the user may submit a query asking for an average, a mean and a standard deviation of an account balance on a portfolio of credit or other accounts. 
     The analytical engine  104  may process such queries to generate a quantitative report  110 , which may include a table or other output indicating the results  114  extracted from the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n . The report  110  may be presented to the user via the user engine  102 , and, in some embodiments, may be temporarily or permanently stored on the user engine  102 , a client machine or elsewhere, or printed or otherwise output. In some embodiments of the system  100  of the invention, the report  110  or other output may be transmitted to a transmission facility  112 , for transmission to a set of personnel via an email, an instant message, a text-to-voice message, a video or via another channel or medium. The transmission facility  112  may include or interface to, for example, a personalized broadcast platform or service such as the Narrowcaster™ platform or Telecaster™ service sold by MicroStrategy Incorporated or another similar communications channel or medium. Similarly, in some embodiments of the invention, more than one user engine  102  or other client resource may permit multiple users to view the report  110 , such as, for instance, via a corporate intranet or over the Internet using a Web browser. Various authorization and access protocols may be employed for security purposes to vary the access permitted users to such report  110  in such embodiments. 
     Additionally, as described in the &#39;766 patent, an administrative level user may create a report as part of a service. Subscribers/users may then receive access to reports through various types of data delivery devices including telephones, pagers, PDAs, WAP protocol devices, email, facsimile, and many others. In addition, subscribers may specify trigger conditions so that the subscriber receives a report only when that condition has been satisfied, as described in detail in the &#39;766 patent. The platform of  FIG. 1  may have many other uses, as described in detail with respect to the MicroStrategy 7 and 7.1 platform, the details of which will be appreciated by one of ordinary skill in the reporting and decision support system art. 
     The steps performed in a method  200  for processing data according to the invention are illustrated in the flowchart of  FIG. 2 . In step  202 , the method  200  begins. In step  204 , the user may supply input, such as a query or a request for information, via the user engine  102 . In step  206 , the user input query may be preliminarily processed, for instance, to determine whether it includes valid fields and for other formatting and error-flagging issues. In step  208 , any error conditions may be trapped and an error message presented to the user, for correction of the error conditions. In step  210 , if a query is in a valid format, the query may then be transmitted to the analytical engine  104 . 
     In step  212 , the analytical engine  104  may further process the input query as appropriate to ensure the intended results  114  may be generated to apply the desired analytics. In step  214 , the query engine  106  may further filter, format and otherwise process the input query to ensure that the query is in a syntax compatible with the syntax of the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n . In step  216 , one or more appropriate databases or other resources within the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  may be identified to be accessed for the given query. 
     In step  218 , the query may be transmitted to the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  and the query may be processed for hits or other results  114  against the content of the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n . In step  220 , the results  114  of the query may be refined, and intermediate or other corresponding results  114  may be stored in the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n . In step  222 , the final results  114  of the processing of the query against the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  may be transmitted to the analytical engine  104  via the query engine  106 . In step  224 , a plurality of analytical measures, filters, thresholds, statistical or other treatments may be run on the results  114 . In step  226 , a report  110  may be generated. The report  110 , or other output of the analytic or other processing steps, may be presented to the user via the user engine  102 . In step  228 , the method  200  ends. 
     In an embodiment of the invention illustrated in  FIG. 4 , a data configuration engine  132  may be presented to a user of the user engine  102 , analytic engine  104  or other resource of a network according to the invention. In this embodiment, a user may be presented with a set of data configuration tools  136 , such as a set of clickable or draggable icons or other graphical or other interface modules, to manipulate a set of data objects  134 . The set of data objects  134  may include, for instance, graphical representations of stored data fields, records, keys or other data structures or objects, or information about such objects. 
     According to the invention, the user may select one or more data objects in the set of data objects  134  and select actions on those objects to create a data object hierarchy of their choosing. For instance, a user may select a “connect” action to draw a connection between a city data object and a district data object, as illustrated in  FIG. 4 . This may be done, for instance, by dragging a cursor  138  between the iconic representation of the two data objects, to create a connection. The connection may be one-directional or two-directional. The user may activate other actions on the set of data objects  134 , for instance to disconnect an existing connection between data objects, or to select or highlight an object for further treatment. 
     In an embodiment of the invention, the graphically connected network of the set of data objects  134  may be reflected in a relationship table  140 . The relationship table  140  may contain a mapping, or editable relationship, between the physical or default database representation of the data objects, and the user-defined hierarchy of the data objects. Other techniques for imaging or storing the data object hierarchy according to the invention may be used, such as the creation of a binary tree, linked list or other logical structure. 
     The resulting network of data objects, with one or more of the objects each being traversable or navigable to one or more other data objects without constraint, results in a data hierarchy  142  such as illustratively shown in  FIG. 5  as a network graph (i.e., connecting nodes together) and particularly as a directed network graph (i.e., showing directionality between nodes). In the illustrated hierarchy, the set of data objects  134  is now linked in a flexible manner according to user selection, here to link market type objects, region object and a store object in a ring. Each of the connections in the data hierarchy  142  may be followed, and each of the linked set of data objects  134  may be clicked into to gain a view of underlying data. Other data objects, connection topologies and relationships are possible, including for instance a three dimensional linkage. However, according to the invention the data hierarchy  142  may be used to obtain views into the data, run reports, searches and otherwise manipulate the information content, without being constrained by the physical layout of the underlying media storing the data. 
     In another regard, as shown in  FIG. 5 , according to the invention one or more of the set of data objects  134  may be selected as an entry point  144 . The entry point  144 , here illustrated as a market type data object, may represent a node or nodes from which views on the data may be obtained or searches or reports run. However, the selection and configuration of one or more of entry point  144  is arbitrary and extensible, using the data configuration engine  132 . A user may thus be presented data and reports from records of interest, in an order and in a hierarchy that is functionally useful, rather than physically required by storage hardware or software by itself. In embodiments of the invention, data objects other than those designated as an entry point  144  may only be accessed after gaining entry into the hierarchy  142  via an entry point  144 . 
     In another aspect, different levels or types of security may be applied to different one or more of the data objects within the set of data objects  134 , for instance to restrict access to different groups of authorized users, or otherwise. Certain data objects, or fields or attributes of those data objects, may be locked from view. Similarly, the number of data objects or attributes that may be accessed and viewed by a given user may be limited, depending on authorization levels or other factors. 
     In another regard, because the data configuration engine  132  operates to define the hierarchy  142  on a logical rather than physical basis, in embodiments of the invention more than one hierarchy  142  may be defined on the same underlying data or using the same underlying database or other storage medium. Each such hierarchy  142  in such a set of hierarchies may have its own independent set of associated connections, entry points, security attributes and other features. 
     The foregoing description of the invention is illustrative, and variations in configuration and implementation will occur to persons skilled in the art. For instance, while the data configuration engine  132  has been illustrated as operating on one set of primitive data objects, other types of objects, such as condition objects, programming objects such as functions, or nested objects can also be managed using the invention. Similarly, while the invention has generally been illustrated in terms of single connections between data objects, one or more data objects may be multiply connected to one or more other data objects. The scope of the invention is accordingly to be limited only by the following claims.