Abstract:
A system for collaborative processing, comprising a controlling module with access to at least one relational database capable of performing a first set of functions on the data in the database and at least one external analytical engine, the external analytical engine being external to the relational database and being capable of a second set of functions on the data in the database. The controlling module is capable of iteratively processing a multi-step calculation including generating SQL statements to the relational database, passing preliminary results to an external analytical engine and saving data back into the relational database for further processing until the multi-step calculation is performed.

Description:
RELATED APPLICATIONS 
     This application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. application Ser. No. 10/043,285 filed Jan. 14, 2002, entitled “System and method for multiple pass cooperative processing,” now abandoned, which is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 09/884,443, filed Jun. 20, 2001 entitled “System and method for multiple pass cooperative processing,” now abandoned. 
    
    
     FIELD OF THE INVENTION 
     The invention relates to the field of data processing, and more particularly to the management of analytic processing against databases to distribute processing tasks to necessary processing resources. 
     BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
     The increase in enterprise software, data warehousing and other strategic data mining resources has increased the demands placed upon the information technology infrastructure of many companies, academic and government agencies, and other organizations. For instance, a retail corporation may capture daily sales data from all retail outlets in one or more regions, countries or on a world wide basis. The resulting very large data base (VLDB) assets may contain valuable indicators of economic, demographic and other trends. 
     However, databases and the analytic engines which interact with those databases may have different processing capabilities. For instance, a database itself, which may be contained within a set of hard disk, optical or other storage media connected to associated servers or mainframes, may contain a set of native processing functions which the database may perform. Commercially available database packages, such as Sybase™, Informix™, DB2™ or others may each contain a different set of base functions. Those functions might include, for instance, the standard deviation, mean, average, or other metric that may be calculated on the data or a subset of the data in the database. Conversely, the analytic engines which may communicate with and operate on databases or reports run on databases may contain a different, and typically larger or more sophisticated, set of processing functions and routines. 
     Thus, a conventional statistical packages suck as the SPSS Inc. SPSS™ or Wolfram Research Mathematica™ platforms may contain hundreds or more of modules, routines, functions and other processing resources to perform advanced computations such as regression analyses, Bayesian analyses, neural net processing, linear optimizations, numerical solutions to differential equations or other techniques. However, when coupled to and operating on data from separate databases, particularly but not limited to large databases, the communication and sharing of the necessary or most efficient computations may not always be optimized between the engine and database. 
     For instance, most available databases may perform averages on sets of data. When running averages on data, it is typically most efficient to compute the average within the database, since this eliminates the need to transmit a quantity of data outside the database, compute the function and return the result. Moreover, in many instances the greatest amount of processing power may be available in the database and its associated server, mainframe or other resources, rather than in a remote client or other machine. 
     On the other hand, the analytic engine and the associated advanced functions provided by that engine may only be installed and available on a separate machine. The analytic engine may be capable of processing a superset of the functions of the database and in fact be able to compute all necessary calculations for a given report, but only at the cost of longer computation time and the need to pass data and results back and forth between the engine and database. An efficient design for shared computation is desirable. Other problems exist. 
     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
     The invention overcoming these and other problems in the art relates to a system and method for multipass cooperative processing which distributes and manages computation tasks between database resources, analytic engines and other resources in a data network. While other systems have been capable of processing part of a SQL request in the database and the other part in an analytical engine/process in a single direction manner, various embodiments of the present invention provide for iterative, multi-directional processing of an entire report being processed against the relational database system. 
     The present invention provides a process for handling multiple steps in a calculation iteratively between a controlling module, a database and an analytical engine external to the database. In this processing environment, some of the calculations or functions to be performed on the data may be performed by the database itself and other calculations or functions may be performed by the external analytical engine. The controlling module resides outside of the relational database receives a report request or other non-SQL request. The controlling module monitors each step in the processing of the report, acting as director over the activities to maximize efficiency and handle complicated multi-sequence calculations so that they do not result in an error. 
     The controlling module generates the SQL statement needed to be executed against the relational database. Upon generation of the SQL, the controlling module directs a first initial query to the database to resolve one step in the multi-step calculation (e.g., fetching, filtering, calculation or aggregate operations). The controlling module then generates a fetch operation to retrieve the data produced by the initial query outside of the database (and the database&#39;s control). The controlling module then passes at least some of the data produced by the initial query to the external analytical engine to perform one or more processing steps on the data. The controlling module then receives the processed results from the external analytical engine and transfers data from that result back into the originating database (e.g., in a database table) or some other database instance. Once in the originating database or the other database instance, the controlling module may direct that further processing occur using the originating database that now includes the data processed by the database and external analytical engine. To do so, the controlling module may generate another SQL statement. That further processing may be done by the database and/or data fetched and provided to the external analytical engine. These steps may continue in any order or sequence and as many times as desired until all of the processes are completed, with the controlling engine generating SQL to perform various calculations or operations. Thus, the present invention allows for multiple levels of nested calculations including calculations that may be performed by the database and those that may be performed by the external analytical engine. 
     The controlling module then provides the ability to pass the result back the requesting system. Also, the controlling module may direct processing to different databases so that various processes are transmitted to other databases for storage or processing. Thus, in one sequence, data could be retrieved from database A, processed by external analytical engine  1 , transmitted to database B, processed with data from database B, transmitted back into database A, processed again by external analytical engine  2 , and then passed back to the requester. 
     In one embodiment of the invention, calculations native to a given database platform nay be trapped and executed in the database, while other types of functions are transmitted to external computational resources for combination into a final result, such as a report executed on the database. In another regard, the invention may permit data including intermediate results to be passed between the computing resources on a cooperative or collaborative basis, so that all computations may be located to their necessary or most efficient processing site. The exchange of data may be done in multiple passes. 
    
    
     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 an architecture for a system according to an embodiment of the invention. 
     FIG. 4 is a flowchart illustrating steps performed by a process for distributed computation according to an embodiment of the invention. 
     FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating steps performed during distributed processing according to an embodiment of the invention, in another regard. 
    
    
     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, joins 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 $1M 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. 3, the user may wish to generate a report  110  containing different types of metrics, illustrated as a first metric  120  and a second metric  122 . The first metric  120  might illustratively be, for instance, an average or mean of a data set, such as sales or other data. The second metric  122  might illustratively be, for instance, a standard deviation or an analytical treatment, such as a regression or other analysis. In this illustrative embodiment, the first metric  120  may be computable by the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  and their associated hardware or by the analytic engine  104 , whereas the second metric  122  may be computable by the analytic engine, only. 
     In this embodiment, a management module  124  may be invoked to manage the distribution of the computation of the report  110  including first metric  120  and second metric  122 . For instance, the management module may maintain a table of computable functions, processes, routines and other executable treatments that the analytical engine  104 , data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n , query engine  106  and other resources in the network of the invention may perform. The management module  124  may then associate available resource with the necessary computations for the given report  110 , including in this instance the first metric  120  and the second metric  122 . The management module  124  may be configured to detect and place the computation of functions in the most efficient processing resource available at the time. For instance, the management module  124  may be configured to always or by default to compute functions that the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  are capable of computing within those devices. 
     In this illustrative embodiment, the management module  124  may detect the first metric  120  as being computable within the data devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  and direct the computation of that metric, such as an average or mean, therein. The management module  124  may likewise detect the second metric  122  as being computable by the analytic engine  104 , and direct the computation of that metric, such as standard deviation or other metric, in that engine. 
     The management module  124  may also detect dependencies in the computation of the first metric  120 , second metric  122  or other metrics necessary to the computation of the report  110 . For instance, it may be the case that the first metric  120  is a necessary input to the computation of the second metric  122 . In that instance, the management module  124  may defer the computation of the second metric  122  until the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  have completed the computation of the first metric  120 . The first metric  120  may then be transmitted as intermediate results to the analytic engine  104 , where that metric may be used to compute the second metric  122 . To achieve the greatest efficiencies of computation and communication, any intermediate results of any computation may be temporarily stored or cached on the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  or other resources so that further computations need not re-compute or retrieve those intermediate data unnecessarily. 
     Likewise, when computations may be most efficiently performed by the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  and inputs from the analytic engine  104  may be needed for those computations, the analytic engine  104  may transmit (or “push”) results to the data storage,  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  for combination and computation therein. Thus, according to the invention the analytic engine  104 , the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  and other engines or resources of the network may act in concert to distribute processing to the necessary or most optimal node of the network, in a collaborative or cooperative fashion, rather then according to a one-directional processing flow where computations and results are merely retrieved (or “pulled”) from the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  for downstream processing elsewhere. Iterative, stepwise or otherwise collaborative computations may thus be carried out, according to the invention. 
     Overall processing according to an embodiment of the invention for distributed function selection and processing is illustrated in FIG.  4 . In step  402 , processing begins. In step  404 , a user query may be received to generate a desired report  110 . In step  406 , the management module  124  may be initiated or invoked. In step  408 , the management module  124  or other resources may parse the query for necessary computations or functions to deliver the report  110 . 
     In step  410 , the management module  124  may determine which computations or functions may be computable in the data storage  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  or other resources. In step  412 , the management module may determine which computations or functions may be computable in the analytic engine  104  or other resources. In step  414 , the management module  124  may identify any dependencies in the order of computation needed to generate report  110 . 
     In step  416 , the management module  124  may transmit instructions, such as SQL or other commands, to the analytic engine  104 , the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  to execute functions, computations or other processing of data from the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  and intermediate results in those distributed resources. Processing may be concurrent or sequential, as appropriate. In step  418 , any intermediate results may be iterated or stored locally or temporarily for more efficient retrieval, such as in storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  or elsewhere. In step  420 , the results of the computations from the various resources may be combined. In step  422 , a report  110  may be generated containing the desired types of metrics, such as first metric  120  and second metric  122 . In step  424 , processing ends. 
     Aspects of the iterated collaboration noted in step  418  of FIG. 4 described above are illustrated in the flowchart of FIG.  5 . As shown in that figure, in step  502 , instructions may be transmitted to the query engine  106 , for instance as part of the generation of a report  110 . In step  504 , the query engine  106  may execute one or more calculation on the data storage devices,  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n . In step  506 , the analytical engine  104  may extract the results of the one or more calculation from the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  and execute one or more calculations from its function set on those results, after which a bulk insert of the results from the analytical engine  104  into the data storage devices  108   a ,  108   b  . . .  108   n  may be performed. In step  508 , a report  110  may be assembled or generated from the collaborative processing, and presented to the user or otherwise output. 
     The foregoing description of the invention is illustrative, and variations in configuration and implementation will occur to persons skilled in the art. For instance, resources illustrated as singular may be distributed amongst multiple resources, whereas resources illustrated as distributed may be combined, in embodiments. The scope of the invention is accordingly to be limited only by the following claims.