Patent Issued for Systems And Methods For Automating And Monitoring Software Development Operations (USPTO 10,983,789)

2021 APR 29 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Allstate Insurance Company (Northbrook, Illinois, United States) has been issued patent number 10,983,789, according to news reporting originating out of Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx editors.

The patent’s inventor is Muddakkagari, Naresh (Chicago, IL).

This patent was filed on January 25, 2019 and was published online on May 3, 2021.

From the background information supplied by the inventors, news correspondents obtained the following quote: “In an age where customers demand quick updates and instant fixes to software-applications, there is a constant pressure to develop quality software applications as quickly as possible. Compounding this problem is an insufficient harmonization between the processes of planning an appropriate software development, testing the operability for developed software codes, integrating various components of a software-based product, deploying the integrated software-based product in various environments, and monitoring the feedback from customers to further repeat the above-described processes. This has caused unnecessary waste of labor and cost. For example, software developers often find themselves having to re-develop software products if a previously developed software product proves to be unsuccessful, and operations personnel find themselves having to wait too long for software developers to code a product that can be tested. Development operations (DevOps) is an engineering practice that strives to continuously integrate the above-described processes as one process pipeline (‘DevOps pipeline’). This has brought some efficiency to software application development by removing some discrepancies between application developers, operations personnel, and customer needs. By decreasing wait times among the various parties involved in the above-described processes, DevOps has resulted in faster time for a software application development to respond to and meet market needs.

“However, various parties and non-parties of the DevOps pipeline may often request information on an aspect of a software application development within the DevOps pipeline. These aspects may include the status of a build, the result of a test, or an assessment of a quality metric, among others. It is difficult, and an unnecessary overhead, for a DevOps personnel to have to independently investigate the DevOps pathway to find the appropriate information, particularly when the information changes dynamically through an application’s development. Thus, DevOps personnel may desire automated systems that can deliver up-to-date information from the source, and whose accuracy can be verified. There is thus is a need for a system and process that automates and monitors software development operations, allowing a party to seamlessly find answers to queries, without interrupting DevOps engineers.”

Supplementing the background information on this patent, NewsRx reporters also obtained the inventor’s summary information for this patent: “In light of the foregoing background, the following presents a simplified summary of the present disclosure in order to provide a basic understanding of some aspects of the features described herein. This summary is not an extensive overview of all of the features described herein. The following summary merely presents some concepts in a simplified form as a prelude to the more detailed description provided below.

“Systems and methods are described for automating and monitoring software development operations. One example method comprises: receiving, by a first computing device having at least one processor and from a user device of a user via a communication network, a request to receive information concerning a software application development across a development operations (DevOps) pipeline; identifying the software application development and query parameters from the request; forming a query comprising an identifier of the software application development and the query parameters to present to a database associated with the computing device, wherein the database is periodically updated based on information from the DevOps pipeline; receiving, from the database associated with the computing device, a tentative response to the request to receive information; performing a validating operation on the received tentative response based on the formed query; and presenting a validated response to the user device via the communication network.

“In accordance with other embodiments of the present disclosure, another example method comprises: receiving, by a first computing device having at least one processor and from a user device of a user via a communication network, a request to receive information concerning a software application development across a development operations (DevOps) pipeline; identifying the software application development and query parameters from the request; forming, using a natural language processing (NLP) application, a query comprising an identifier of the software application development and the query parameters; sending the query to a second computing device, wherein the second computing device is associated with an integration of a plurality of DevOps tools in the DevOps pipeline; receiving, from the second computing device, a response to the request to receive information; presenting the response to the user device via the communication network.

“In accordance with other embodiments of the present disclosure, an example system comprises: one or more processors; a natural language processing (NLP) unit; a natural language interpreter unit (e.g., an artificial intelligence markup language (AIML) interpreter unit); an integrating application associated with one or more tools for development operations of a software application; and memory storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the system to: receive, from a user device of a user via a communication network, a request to receive information concerning a software application development across a development operations (DevOps) pipeline; identify the software application development and query parameters from the received request; and form, using the NLP unit, a query comprising an identifier of the software application development and one or more query parameters.

“The system may further include a calibrator. The memory may store additional computer-executable instructions, which when executed by the one or more processors, cause the system to perform one or more iterations of: performing a search operation for an answer to the query from a database associated with the system, and wherein the natural language interpreter (e.g., AIML interpreter) periodically updates the database using information from one or more software development tools used in the DevOps pipeline; presenting a tentative answer to the calibrator for validation; and if the tentative answer does not meet a threshold validity metric, reforming the query using the NLP unit. If the tentative answer does meet the threshold validity metric, the memory may store additional computer-executable instructions, which when executed by the one or more processors, would cause the system to develop a validated response to the request to receive information; and displaying the response on a user interface of the user device.

“The memory may store additional computer-executable instructions, which when executed by the one or more processors, may cause the system to: receive an answer to the query from an application associated with an integration of a plurality of DevOps tools in the DevOps pipeline; and present the answer as a response to request to receive information a user interface of the user device.

“In accordance with other embodiments of the present disclosure, one or more non-transitory computer readable media stores computer-executable instructions. When these computer-executable instructions are executed by a computing device, the computing device may perform one or more of the methods described herein.

“Other features and advantages of the disclosure will be apparent from the additional description provided herein.

“The methods and systems of the above-referenced embodiments may also include other additional elements, steps, computer-executable instructions, or computer-readable data structures. In this regard, other embodiments are disclosed and claimed herein as well. The details of these and other embodiments are set forth in the accompanying drawings and the description below. Other features and advantages will be apparent from the description, drawings, and claims.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“What is claimed is:

“1. A method comprising: receiving, by a first computing device having at least one processor and from a user device of a user via a communication network, a request to receive information concerning a software application development across a development operations (DevOps) pipeline; identifying the software application development and query parameters from the request; forming a query comprising an identifier of the software application development and the query parameters to present to a database associated with the first computing device, wherein the database is periodically updated based on information from the DevOps pipeline; receiving, from the database associated with the first computing device, a first tentative response to the request to receive information; performing a first validating operation on the first tentative response based on the formed query; after determining that the first tentative response to the request to receive information does not meet a threshold validity metric, forming a revised query; identifying one or more relevant DevOps tools in the DevOps pipeline based on the query parameters; for each of the identified one or more relevant DevOps tools, determining an alias identifier for each of one or more of the software application development or query parameter; sending, to a source integrator for each of the identified one or more relevant DevOps tools, a request for an individual response to the revised query, and the alias identifiers corresponding to the one or more of the software application development or query parameter; receiving from the source integrator for each of the identified one or more relevant DevOps tools, the individual response to the revised query; integrating the individual response from the source integrator for each of the identified one or more relevant DevOps tools to form a revised tentative response to the request to receive information; and after performing a second validating operation on the revised tentative response, presenting a validated response to the user device via the communication network.

“2. The method of claim 1, wherein the periodic updating of the database further comprises: for each of a plurality of software application developments across a DevOps pipeline, receiving information for one or more events from a plurality of software development tools in the DevOps pipeline; and for each of the plurality of software application developments, entering the information for the one or more events within data structures associated with the software application developments.

“3. The method of claim 2, wherein the periodic updating of the database further comprises: receiving a notification of a new software application development; and creating a new data structure using an identifier of the new software application development.

“4. The method of claim 1, wherein the performing the validating operation on the first tentative response based on the formed query further comprises: determining that the first tentative response to the request to receive information does not meet a threshold validity metric; forming a revised query to present to the database associated with the first computing device; and receiving, from the database associated with the first computing device, a revised tentative response to the request to receive information.

“5. The method of claim 1, wherein the first tentative response is an indication that the information requested to be received cannot be found in the database associated with the first computing device.

“6. The method of claim 1, wherein the sending the request for the individual response to the revised query and the alias identifiers further comprises: determining that the information requested to be received cannot be found in the database associated with the first computing device; and sending the revised query to a second computing device, wherein the second computing device is associated with an integration of a plurality of DevOps tools in the DevOps pipeline.

“7. The method of claim 1, wherein the presenting a validated response to the user device via the communication network further comprises: displaying the validated response to the query on a user interface in a format desired by the user.

“8. The method of claim 1, wherein the query parameters include one or more of: an identifier of the software application development; an identifier of a build of the software application development, an identifier or date of a release of at least a part of the software application development or at least a part of the build; a stage and/or process in the DevOps pipeline; a quality metric; a subcategory of the above query parameters; or a combination thereof.

“9. The method of claim 1, wherein the DevOps tools includes one or more of: a compiler; a continuous integration (CI) server; a quality assurance and testing tool; a documentation databases; a project management tool; a code editing tool; a code coverage tool; a unit testing tool; an integrated development environment (IDE) tool; an installation or deployment tool; a code management tool; or a dashboard for viewing test results and feedback.

“10. A method comprising: receiving, by a first computing device having at least one processor and from a user device of a user via a communication network, a request to receive information concerning a software application development across a development operations (DevOps) pipeline; identifying the software application development and query parameters from the request; forming, using a natural language processing (NLP) application, a query comprising an identifier of the software application development and the query parameters; identifying one or more relevant DevOps tools of the plurality of DevOps tools in the DevOps pipeline based on the query parameters; for each of the identified one or more relevant DevOps tools, determining an alias identifier for each of one or more of the software application development or query parameter; sending, to a source integrator for each of the identified one or more relevant DevOps tools, a request for an individual response to the revised query, and the alias identifiers corresponding to the one or more of the software application development or query parameter; causing the source integrator for each of the identified one or more relevant DevOps tools to generate an individual response to the query; causing a second computing device to integrate the individual response from the source integrator for each of the identified one or more relevant DevOps tools to form the first response to the request to receive information; receiving, from the second computing device, a first response to the request to receive information; and presenting the first response to the user device via the communication network.

“11. The method of claim 10, further comprising: performing a validating operation on the first response; and wherein the presenting the first response to the user device via the communication network comprises presenting a validated response to the user device via the communication network.

“12. The method of claim 11, wherein the performing the validating operation on the first response further comprises: determining that the first response does not meet a threshold validity metric; forming a revised query; receiving, from the second computing device, a second response to the request to receive information; and performing a validating operation on the received second response based on the revised query.

“13. The method of claim 10, further comprising: determining, by the first computing device, that the query solicits a dynamic response.

“14. A system comprising: one or more processors; a natural language processing (NLP) unit; an artificial intelligence markup language (AIML) interpreter unit; an integrating application associated with one or more tools for development operations of a software application; and memory storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the system to: receive, from a user device of a user via a communication network, a request to receive information concerning a software application development across a development operations (DevOps) pipeline; identify the software application development and query parameters from the received request; form, using the NLP unit, a query comprising an identifier of the software application development and one or more query parameters; identify, based on the one or more query parameters, one or more relevant DevOps tools in the DevOps pipeline; for each of the identified one or more relevant DevOps tools, determine an alias identifier for each of the software application development or the one or more query parameters; send, to a source integrator for each of the identified one or more relevant DevOps tools, a request for an individual response to the query, and the alias identifiers, receive, from each of the identified one or more relevant DevOps tools, an individual response to the query; integrate the individual response from the source integrator for each of the identified one or more relevant DevOps tools to form a first response to the request to receive information.

“15. The system of claim 14, further comprising: a calibrator; and wherein the memory stores additional computer-executable instructions, which when executed by the one or more processors, cause the system to, prior to sending the request for the individual response to the query: perform a search operation for a tentative answer to the query from a database associated with the system, and wherein the AIL interpreter periodically updates the database using information from one or more software development tools used in the DevOps pipeline; present the tentative answer to the calibrator for validation; and after the tentative answer does not meet a threshold validity metric, reforming the query using the NLP unit.

“16. The system of claim 14, wherein the memory stores additional computer-executable instructions, which when executed by the one or more processors, cause the system to: receive the first response to the query from an application associated with an integration of a plurality of DevOps tools in the DevOps pipeline; and present the first response via a user interface of the user device.”

For the URL and additional information on this patent, see: Muddakkagari, Naresh. Systems And Methods For Automating And Monitoring Software Development Operations. U.S. Patent Number 10,983,789, filed January 25, 2019, and published online on May 3, 2021. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=10,983,789.PN.&OS=PN/10,983,789RS=PN/10,983,789

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