Patent Document ID: 8024320
Application ID: 11866168

Base Claim:
1. A method for querying a database comprising: identifying an interface to the database for receiving a query including path expressions by a database management apparatus; receiving input defining a compliance rule, the input including: i) input identifying a configuration-item type, the identified configuration-item type determining a type of configuration item in an IT infrastructure of different types of configuration items; ii) input defining a rule scope, the rule scope determining which configuration items of the identified type are to be checked by the compliance rule; and iii) input defining a desired state for each of the configuration items to be checked by the rule, the desired state including at least one compliance condition that must be satisfied for a checked configuration item to be in compliance; receiving input identifying at least one path, each path being from an object in an object model to a related object in the object model or to an attribute of a related object in the object model; creating a path expression for each identified path, each path expression being composed from tokens selected from the group consisting of object identifiers, attribute identifiers, a relationship operator, and path qualifiers, the tokens sequentially added together to create the path expression; displaying at least one list of selectable items, each item associated with a token; receiving selection of at least one of the selectable items; including the at least one token associated with the selected at least one item into the path expression for one of the identified paths; creating a query for querying data structured in accordance with the object model, the query including at least one of the created path expressions; and executing the query on the database to query the data.

---

Claim 7:
7. The method of claim 1 , comprising: accumulating query fragments associated with the rule scope; accumulating query fragments associated with the desired state; and merging the accumulated query fragments into a query for applying the compliance rule to data corresponding to the IT infrastructure, wherein at least one query fragment, the query, or both the query and the at least one query fragment, includes the path expression for one of the identified paths.