Patent Grant
7809689
Copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/122,584, filed 5 May 2005, entitled “METHOD, SYSTEM, AND PROGRAM PRODUCT FOR USING ANALYSIS VIEWS TO IDENTIFY DATA SYNCHRONIZATION PROBLEMS BETWEEN DATABASES”, and Ser. No. 10/040,844, filed 7 Jan. 2002, for a workstation management tool, are assigned to the same assignee hereof and contain subject matter related, in certain respects, to the subject matter of the present application. The above-identified patent applications are incorporated herein by reference.
1. Technical Field of the Invention
This invention relates to computer databases. More particularly, it relates to a system and method for creating, managing, and accessing an archive database (information repository).
2. Background Art
Very often a database will grow too large or may contain sensitive information that needs to be isolated from general use. Such information is generally considered “old data”, and is moved to an archive, generally for the purpose of maintaining an audit trail.
There is a need in the art, however, for not discarding or simply archiving excess information, but rather for maintaining such information out of the way of end-users and yet kept within a production setting where it can be queried in live time along with the production data.
System, method and computer program product for creating, managing, and accessing an information repository including a source database and an archive database, by defining the source database and the archive database to a same schema; providing to a user terminal a common user interface for accessing the source database and the archive database; selectively executing a timed archive agent, an end user archive agent, and a criteria based archive agent for archiving source data from the source database as archive data to the archive database; selectively executing a criteria based restore agent and an end user restore agent to restore archive data from the archive database as source data to the source database; and executing an integrated functions agent to assemble compiled data from source data and archive data and present the compiled data to the user interface.
Other features and advantages of this invention will become apparent from the following detailed description of the presently preferred embodiment of the invention, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.
In accordance with a preferred embodiment of the invention, a system and method is provided for creating, maintaining, and using an integrated archive repository, or mirror database application, having a schema identical in all relevant respects to that of an original database source application, or production repository or database.
In accordance with some criteria, such as a straight scheduled archive, archive on demand, information becoming sensitive, soft document deletion, and so forth, information is moved from the source application to a mirror archive where the information is available for secure direct access by qualified personnel and also for restoration on demand to the source application and for integration with the source information to support reports, measurements, audits, and so forth.
Thus, information is not merely archived, but placed in an alternative repository where it remains integrated with the original repository, thus keeping the information in a production setting. That alternative repository is a database which sits outside of the production application and to which information is removed when no longer used by the application. This can be queried in live time along with the production data, but it is still out of the end-user's way.
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The client information manager (CIM) 42 includes a database 43 with information about people in an organization (such as a division of a corporation) and the type of computing equipment they have at their workstation or otherwise in their respective offices or otherwise allocated for a person's use.
The workstation planning and deployment manager 44 includes a deployment database 45 showing for each such division the personal workstation computing budget to which the division is entitled, and provides for the scheduling and deployment of equipment, and related reporting, according to that budget.
The archive client manager 46 and database 47 provides for storage of information which must be isolated for security reasons. This is a criteria based archived database of persons who had a machine deployed, including transitioned employees, and includes the same information in the same format as for the client information manager 42.
Another example of information stored to archive database 47, and of uses of such information, include new hires and transfers between divisions who need to be moved into CIM database 43 and deployed equipment upon arrival on the job. An asset manager may enter such information to archive database 47 and move it into CIM database 43 at his discretion.
A timed archive of information from CIM database 43 to archive database 47 may be a complete or partial archive of database 43, which enables CIM database to be purged of selected records to manage the size of that database 43.
In order to provide certain reporting features, including measurements and auditing, all databases 43, 45, and 47 are connected through a refresh plan reports function, or agent, 44. For example, such reports may provide for each information technology (IT) representative for each division a report of business areas supported and the deployment of equipment against a deployment budget. Agent 44, in this example, in order to show how many individuals have received laptops will need to access both CIM database 43 and archive database 47.
A specific example of how this reporting function may work: suppose an employee, who was scheduled for a desk top in the first quarter, experiences a job change that requires that he be deployed a lap top immediately. Deployment and reporting agent 44 is operated by asset manager 40 to show from CIM database 43 allocation of the latest equipment deployed to this employee and to show from archive database 47 previous deployments to this employee during the planning period.
The design of each database 43, 45, 47 is common so that agent 44 can generate reports accessing them all. Each database is provided lookup views at a user interface (UI) which is the same. This is so that the user can get the same data from each of the databases listed and do comparisons and compilations upon the data contained in each, including the archive repository.
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Information added to archive database 47 may be based on criteria, and will normally not be just a snapshot of the CIM database 43. An example of such a criteria would be an employee in CIM database 43 who is no longer in the organization shown in the business area (BA) field. His record in CIM 43 may be moved to archive database 47 on a record basis either automatically or on demand.
Referring to
Update allocations 96 and update inventory 98, neither pertinent to the present invention, update sets of numbers in the database WPDM. Transfer allocation/inventory 100, not pertinent to the present invention, moves certain numbers to and from different database documents as a method of transferring governing control over those numbers.
Refresh plan reports 102 allows the user to retrieve a set of information from the three databases 43, 45, 47 previously described. It runs an agent to pull in information from all these databases and build a viewable report 108 (Table 3) that identifies problems or mishaps in the deployment process.
Archive 104 moves a document to an archived status, but does not interact with the CIM archive database.
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SRMNumber< > “ ” And
SRMCompleteDate = “ ”) Or
RequestToSRM = “yes” And
SRMCompleteDate = “ ”) Then
It is an advantage of the present invention that there is provided a system and method maintaining excess and sensitive information out of the way of end-users and yet within a production setting where it can be queried in live time along with the production data.
The invention can take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, an entirely software embodiment or an embodiment containing both hardware and software elements. In a preferred embodiment, the invention is implemented in software, which includes but is not limited to firmware, resident software, microcode, etc.
Furthermore, the invention can take the form of a computer program product accessible from a computer-readable medium providing program code for use by or in connection with a computer or any instruction execution system. For the purposes of this description, a computer-readable medium can be any apparatus that can store the program for use by or in connection with the instruction execution, system, apparatus, or device.
The medium can be an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor system (or apparatus or device). Examples of a computer-readable medium include a semiconductor or solid state memory, magnetic tape, a removable computer diskette, a random access memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), a rigid magnetic disk and an optical disk. Current examples of optical disks include compact disk—read only memory (CD-ROM), compact disk—read/write (CD-R/W) and DVD.
A data processing system suitable for storing and/or executing program code will include at least one processor coupled directly or indirectly to memory elements through a system bus. The memory elements can include local memory employed during actual execution of the program code, bulk storage, and cache memories which provide temporary storage of at least some program code in order to reduce the number of times code must be retrieved from bulk storage during execution.
Input/output or I/O devices (including but not limited to keyboards, displays, pointing devices, etc.) can be coupled to the system either directly or through intervening I/O controllers.
Network adapters may also be coupled to the system to enable the data processing system to become coupled to other data processing systems or remote printers or storage devices through intervening private or public networks. Modems, cable modem and Ethernet cards are just a few of the currently available types of network adapters.
It will be appreciated that, although specific embodiments of the invention have been described herein for purposes of illustration, various modifications may be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.
Accordingly, the scope of protection of this invention is limited only by the following claims and their equivalents.
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