“Central Repository System with Customizable Subset Schema Design and Simplification Layer” in Patent Application Approval Process (USPTO 20230109718): Allstate Insurance Company

2023 APR 28 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A patent application by the inventors Abaya, Maria Nina (Elkridge, MD, US); Navratil, Zoran (Colorado Springs, CO, US); Polen, Michael (Tampa, FL, US), filed on October 4, 2021, was made available online on April 13, 2023, according to news reporting originating from Washington, D.C., by NewsRx correspondents.

This patent application is assigned to Allstate Insurance Company (Northbrook, Illinois, United States).

The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Corporations and/or enterprises may have development teams to build one or more products, such as applications, application programming interfaces (API(s)), executables, and the like, for each of the development teams. Within this disclosure, the term development team, application team, application, local team, team, and system are used interchangeably. In some instances, these development teams may be siloed based on the business unit the development team supports. The corporations and/or enterprises may define a canonical model to define a schema, or common format, to ensure that products from different development teams can communicate with each other. To ensure this communication between development teams and/or applications, however, it is common for each development team to create (or participate in) transformational mappings of their data objects to the organization’s canonical model so that all other applications can understand/read/receive their data. Sometimes, these transformational mappings may be created by an enterprise data group or another data-focused group, but regardless there is considerable effort and resources expended to create and/or maintain these transformational mappings. Regardless of approach, today’s common approach to creating and maintaining transformational mappings from an application to the canonical model is error-prone and very complex/expensive to maintain and stay current with a changing/evolving canonical model. Some corporations and/or enterprises have defined repositories of data objects and/or entities that development teams can pull from. However, these data objects and/or entities may comprise artifacts (e.g., superfluous or extraneous code snippets) that are not necessary for the development team and/or do not support the development team’s needs or preferences. These artifacts may cause the products to execute slowly or consume more processing resources. Additionally, traditional repositories representing structures of data objects are rigid. In this regard, a user is expected to consume and/or use the precise data objects with little-to-no customization managed in the repository. Furthermore, removing and/or changing the undesired data objects may change the data object and/or entity such that the data object and/or entity no longer complies with the canonical model. Accordingly, the data object and/or entity, and the product it is associated with, may no longer communicate with other products in the enterprise.

“Aspects described herein may address these and other problems, and generally improve the efficiency and performance of product and application development.”

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent application, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent application: “The following presents a simplified summary of various aspects described herein. This summary is not an extensive overview, and is not intended to identify key or critical elements or to delineate the scope of the claims. The following summary merely presents some concepts in a simplified form as an introductory prelude to the more detailed description provided below. Corresponding apparatus, systems, and computer-readable media are also within the scope of the disclosure.

“Example methods and systems described herein disclose generating products (e.g., applications, executables, API(s), data structures, schemas, business rule models, relational data models, etc.) using data objects and/or entities that are defined within one or more canonical models managed by a central repository system. The term central and enterprise may be used interchangeably within this disclosure. The data objects and/or entities may be obtained from an enterprise canonical model and/or local (system/team) model(s). One or more rules may be applied to the product to flatten the data structure of the product such that superfluous or extraneous data definition snippets, including unwanted child entities, unwanted associative entities, and relationships between structured data objects, may be removed, or reduced (as applicable), in such a way that the product is transformable to the enterprise canonical model. This improves the speed and/or efficiency with which products are generated, consumed, developed, and executed, while ensuring that the products are able to communicate with other internal products and applications. By forward-engineering the data schemas/products used by applications utilizing the central repository system, the traditional need to develop and maintain transformational mappings through a manual, highly fragmented and/or distributed (and often unorganized) process is eliminated. Since the applications use schemas/products generated from the central repository system, there is no need or value in managing transformation mappings elsewhere. This results in much more accurate, efficient (automated) and trusted transformational mappings that require no manual maintenance or involvement. Additionally, since the application schemas are sourced and generated from the central repository system, there is no need for separately managed transformation data mappings.

“These features, along with many others, are discussed in greater detail below.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A system comprising: a central repository system; one or more canonical models managed by the central repository system, wherein the one or more canonical models comprise one or more structured elements, and wherein the one or more structured elements comprise one or more simple elements; and one or more subset schemas, wherein the one or more subset schemas comprise one or more of the one or more elements from the one or more canonical models.

“2. The system of claim 1, wherein the central repository system is configured to facilitate design, recording, and generation of the one or more subset schemas by: applying one or more simplification rules to a subset schema; and generating at least one of a collapse of an associative element, a reduction to cardinality of a relationship between two structured elements, a collapse of a 1:1 element, a collapse of a supertype element, a collapse of a subtype element, or a collapse of a repeating end branch element into an array.

“3. The system of claim 1, wherein the central repository system is configured to facilitate design, recording, and generation of the one or more subset schemas by managing content synchronization rules between selected subset schemas wherein the content synchronization rules perform at least two of: govern content integrity between an independent and dependent subset schema; govern content integrity of two overlapping subset schemas; govern content integrity between two content equivalent subset schema; govern content integrity between two mutually exclusive subset schemas; and enforce layout simplification compatibility between a plurality of the selected subset schemas.

“4. The system of claim 1, wherein the central repository system being a design and sourcing system to forward-engineer and generate the one or more subset schemas from the one or more canonical models enables the central repository system to create and store internal data object mappings and record simplifications applied to a subset schema wherein the central repository system is operable to programmatically generate data object mappings and data object transformation logic between data objects in the one or more subset schemas and their corresponding data objects in the one or more canonical models.

“5. The system of claim 4, wherein at least one of the one or more subset schemas is a simplified subset schema.

“6. The system of claim 5, wherein the central repository system is configured to broker data exchange between any two generated subset schemas using the programmatically generated data object mappings and data object transformation logic.

“7. The system of claim 1, wherein the central repository system is configured to manage content of the one or more subset schemas wherein managing the subset schema content comprises including data objects from an enterprise model in combination with data objects from one or more local models.

“8. The system of claim 7, wherein managing the subset schema content comprises sanctioning and promoting a data object from a local model to an enterprise model.

“9. The system of claim 1, wherein the central repository system is configured to customize a subset schema layout wherein the customized subset schema may include a structured element a plurality of times wherein each instance of the repeating structured element may be comprised of different simple elements.

“10. The system of claim 9, wherein customizing the subset schema layout comprises dynamic ComplexTypes to enable the inclusion of the repeating structured elements, wherein each repeating structured element in the customized subset schema layout can be comprised of different simple elements.

“11. The system of claim 9, wherein the customized subset schema layout comprises a custom team element configured to group data objects from across any combination of one or more local models and an enterprise model.

“12. The system of claim 9, wherein customizing the subset schema layout comprises substituting a structured element with an element pointer.

“13. The system of claim 1, wherein the central repository system is configured to manage a plurality of role names for an element wherein the role names promote contextual naming and usage of data objects and allow for tracking implementation of an underlying enterprise element while supporting precise contextual support.

“14. The system of claim 13, wherein the role names enable a structured element to comprise a simple element a plurality of times.

“15. The system of claim 1, wherein the central repository system is configured to manage enhanced metadata to enable the central repository system to generate a relational data model of a subset schema wherein the generated relational data model is operable to include at least eight of: independent entities, dependent entities, associative entities, supertype entities, subtype entities, subtype groupings, subtype grouping type, subtype grouping members, bidirectional relationships between entities, relationship cardinality of relationships between entities, relationship optionality of relationships between entities, parent-to-child relationship phrases, child-to-parent relationship phrases, attributes, attribute data types, primary keys, alternate keys, business keys, and foreign keys.

“16. The system of claim 15, wherein the subset schema represented by the generated relational data model is a simplified subset schema forward engineered by the central repository system from the one or more canonical models.

“17. The system of claim 1, wherein the central repository system is configured to manage data quality rules through a governship process wherein each element of the enterprise model is subject to at least two of: a governed state, a compliance state and a programmatically assigned element definition state.

“18. The system of claim 17, wherein the data quality rules further manage a subset implementation state for each subset schema defined in the central repository system through production implementation rules wherein the subset implementation state of the subset schema is a significant variable to the programmatically assigned element definition state of each enterprise element the subset schema comprises.

“19. The system of claim 17, wherein the data quality rules allow for the one or more subset schemas to contain enterprise compliant elements in combination with authorized enterprise non-compliant elements.

“20. The system of claim 19, wherein the data quality rules support recording of replacement elements and resolution plans for non-compliant elements.

“21. The system of claim 1, wherein the central repository system is configured to record sample values of data objects and display the sample values in a central repository interface to drive efficient object selection.

“22. The system of claim 1, wherein the central repository system is configured to: record sample value streams for the one or more subset schemas; and generate sample data records compliant with the one or more subset schemas.

“23. The system of claim 5, wherein the central repository system is configured to produce a generated subset schema in a plurality of executable formats wherein the plurality of executable formats comprise at least one of: Avro Schema Definition; JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Schema Definition; Java Class Definition; XML Schema Definition (XSD); .Net Class Definition; or Data Definition Language.

“24. A method comprising: operating a central repository system to manage one or more canonical models; applying, by the central repository system, one or more simplification rules to a subset schema, wherein the subset schema comprises one or more elements forward engineered from the one or more canonical models managed by the central repository system; and generating a simplified subset schema in one or more executable formats.

“25. The method of claim 24, wherein the one or more executable formats include at least one of: Avro Schema Definition; JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Schema Definition; Java Class Definition; XML Schema Definition (XSD); .Net Class Definition; or Data Definition Language.

“26. The method of claim 24 wherein the one or more simplification rules comprises at least two of: collapsing an associative element; reducing cardinality of a relationship between two structured elements; collapsing a 1:1 element; collapsing a supertype element; collapsing a subtype element; or collapsing a repeating end branch element into an array.

“27. The method of claim 26, wherein the central repository system is configured to enforce layout simplification compatibility between a plurality of selected subset schemas.

“28. The method of claim 24, wherein the central repository system is the design and sourcing system to forward-engineer and generate the simplified subset schema enabling the central repository system to programmatically generate data object mappings and data object transformation logic between data objects in the simplified subset schema and their corresponding data objects in the one more canonical models.

“29. The method of claim 28, wherein the central repository system is configured to broker data exchange between generated subset schemas by using the programmatically generated data object mappings and data object transformation logic generated by the central repository system.

“30. The method of claim 28, wherein the central repository system is configured to: manage enhanced metadata; and generate a relational data model of the simplified subset schema.

“31. The method of claim 28, wherein the central repository system is configured to: record sample value streams for the simplified subset schema; and generate sample data records compliant with the simplified subset schema.”

URL and more information on this patent application, see: Abaya, Maria Nina; Navratil, Zoran; Polen, Michael. Central Repository System with Customizable Subset Schema Design and Simplification Layer. U.S. Patent Application Number 20230109718, filed October 4, 2021 and posted April 13, 2023. Patent URL (for desktop use only): https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/external.html?q=(20230109718)&db=US-PGPUB&type=ids

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