Patent Application
20100332277
Current enterprise systems may process events that require changes to one or more data objects. A single event may require changes to multiple data objects. An example of an event may be a new hire event in a human resources application. When a new hire event is initiated, several separate sub-events may need to take place. For example, multiple data objects may need to be modified or created, such as an employee data object and an employment agreement data object. Notifications of changes to data objects may need to be sent to various applications within the enterprise system. For example, an application that initiated the event may require notification. In addition, other applications within the enterprise system may desire to receive updates when certain data objects have been created or modified. For example, even though a human resource application initiated a new hire event, a compensation management application may also be interested in receiving updates to all employee data objects and all employment agreement data objects.
Conventionally, as each data object is created or modified, all interested applications within an enterprise system may be notified of the change. However, this may result in numerous notifications that could create confusion for applications unaware of the cause for the change. Therefore, an improved solution for the management of changes to data objects and notification of those changes is needed.
Various embodiments disclose a method for managing changes made to data objects in an enterprise system. The current solutions provides a change manager to provide consolidate change notifications to interested consumers. A consumer may be an application, system component or system user. In this manner, consumers receive a single consolidated notification when an event has been completed. Further, since the change notification contains information regarding changes to all data objects associated with an event, all notified consumers will understand the reason for the change notification. Once a consolidated change notification has been received by a consumer, the consumer may use the consolidated change information to perform system tasks.
An embodiment of the present invention includes a computer-implemented method of consolidated change management. A change manager may receive a new event notification. Once a new event notification has been received by the change manager, change information may be received by the change manager. The change information may be associated with one or more data objects that have been changed during the processing of a new event. As each change is received by the change manager, the changes may be stored within a consolidated change buffer. After a new event has been completed, a consolidated change notification may be sent by the change manager to one or more subscribers.
After an event has been registered with change manager 100, change manager 100 may listen for changes to data objects associated with the event. The actual changes to data objects may be made by a process executing the event. Changes to data objects may be stored in one or more data objects or business objects. As changes are made to each data object, change manager collects data associated with each change in consolidated data changes 160. Consolidated data changes 160 may be a memory storing a database.
In the example illustrated, data change event 105 has four associated data objects, A, B, C and D. As each data object is modified, change manager 100 may collect information associated with the modification and may store the information in consolidated data changes 160. After all required changes have been made to data objects A, B, C and D, a close event 115 may be communicated to change manager 100. Close event 115 may indicate that that all changes to data objects have been made and that the event has been completed. Upon receiving close event 115, change manager 100 may send a notification to one or more consumers associated with the event. Associated consumers may have subscribed to the event or subscribed to notifications associated with one or more data objects modified during the event. Change manager 100 may access a registration database that may include relationships between consumers and events. If a consumer has registered for change notification within an event, the registration may be listed within the registration database.
Consumers may receive a consolidated change notification that indicates one or more changes to data objects. The consumers may be application programs that may be interested in using change information to compile new data sets or perform other functions necessary within the enterprise system. For example, a compensation management application may be interested in changes to human resources data objects. After the completion of a new hire event, a compensation management application may use the information provided by the change manager to access changed data objects and calculate updates to employee compensation data. Further, the compensation management application may use the information to notify one or more users of the enterprise system, such as accountants, of new compensation data. The embodiments are not limited to this example.
At step 230, the change manager may store change information in a consolidated change buffer. The consolidated change buffer may be a computer-readable medium used to store change information associated with modified data objects. A record may be created for each data object that has been modified during an event. Each record may also include a detailed summary of the changes that were made to the data object.
At step 240, a consolidated change notification may be sent to one or more consumers associated with the new event. The consolidate change notification may include information about each object that was changed, detailed information about the changes made to each object and information about the event that caused the data objects to be changed. The change manager may look up associated consumers in a relational database that associates consumers with particular data objects or events.
Once the process 310 has registered a new event at change manager 330, the process 310 may make changes to data objects at step 350. Data objects that are changed may be stored in master data 320. The data objects stored in master data 320 may be universally available to the consumers of an enterprise management system. As changes are being made to each data object, the data object may be locked and may not be accessed or changed while the change is taking place. After each change has been made, change information may be published to change manager 330. Change manager 330 may buffer each published change into a consolidated change buffer at step 360.
An event may include one or more changes to data objects stored in master data 320. At the conclusion of the event, a close event notification may be sent from process 310 to change manager 330 at step 365. At step 370, change manager 330 may respond to a close event notification by publishing a consolidated summary of changes made during the event to a consumer of change information 340. Consumer of change information may be one or more consumers that have subscribed to one or more data objects or events or are otherwise associated with one or more data objects or events.
At step 465, change manager 430 may check each published change. As each change is published, change manager 430 may check whether the key data object has been changed. A change to the key data object may trigger a consolidated change notification. When the key data object has been modified, the change manager 430 may detect the change and publishes a consolidated change notification at step 470. In this manner, it is unnecessary for process 410 to send a close event notification to the change manager to trigger a consolidated change notification.
System 500 includes change manager 540. Change manager 540 may be implemented in software and may be stored on memory 520. Change manager may be responsible for collecting change information and notifying one or more consumers of consolidated change information in accordance with one or more embodiments described herein.
Numerous specific details have been set forth herein to provide a thorough understanding of the embodiments. It will be understood by those skilled in the art, however, that the embodiments may be practiced without these specific details. In other instances, well-known operations, components and circuits have not been described in detail so as not to obscure the embodiments. It can be appreciated that the specific structural and functional details disclosed herein may be representative and do not necessarily limit the scope of the embodiments.
Various embodiments may be implemented using hardware elements, software elements, or a combination of both. Examples of hardware elements may include processors, microprocessors, circuits, circuit elements (e.g., transistors, resistors, capacitors, inductors, and so forth), integrated circuits, application specific integrated circuits (ASIC), programmable logic devices (PLD), digital signal processors (DSP), field programmable gate array (FPGA), logic gates, registers, semiconductor device, chips, microchips, chip sets, and so forth. Examples of software may include software components, programs, applications, computer programs, application programs, system programs, machine programs, operating system software, middleware, firmware, software modules, routines, subroutines, functions, methods, procedures, software interfaces, application program interfaces (API), instruction sets, computing code, computer code, code segments, computer code segments, words, values, symbols, or any combination thereof. Determining whether an embodiment is implemented using hardware elements and/or software elements may vary in accordance with any number of factors, such as desired computational rate, power levels, heat tolerances, processing cycle budget, input data rates, output data rates, memory resources, data bus speeds and other design or performance constraints.
Some embodiments may be implemented, for example, using a computer-readable medium or article which may store an instruction or a set of instructions that, if executed by a machine, may cause the machine to perform a method and/or operations in accordance with the embodiments. The machine may be a computer or series of interconnected computers. Such a computer may include, for example, any suitable processing platform, computing platform, computing device, processing device, computing system, processing system, computer, processor, or the like, and may be implemented using any suitable combination of hardware and/or software. The computer-readable medium or article may include, for example, any suitable type of memory unit, memory device, memory article, memory medium, storage device, storage article, storage medium and/or storage unit, for example, memory, removable or non-removable media, erasable or non-erasable media, writeable or re-writeable media, digital or analog media, hard disk, floppy disk, Compact Disk Read Only Memory (CD-ROM), Compact Disk Recordable (CD-R), Compact Disk Rewriteable (CD-RW), optical disk, magnetic media, magneto-optical media, removable memory cards or disks, various types of Digital Versatile Disk (DVD), a tape, a cassette, or the like. The instructions may include any suitable type of code, such as source code, compiled code, interpreted code, executable code, static code, dynamic code, encrypted code, and the like, implemented using any suitable high-level, low-level, object-oriented, visual, compiled and/or interpreted programming language.
