Patent Issued for Universal access layer for accessing heterogeneous data stores (USPTO 11461488): Allstate Insurance Company

2022 OCT 25 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Allstate Insurance Company (Northbrook, Illinois, United States) has been issued patent number 11461488, according to news reporting originating out of Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx editors.

The patent’s inventors are Gupta, Avinash (95747, CA, US), Kamble, Hruday (Roseville, CA, US), Yang, Kevin (Fremont, CA, US).

This patent was filed on April 2, 2020 and was published online on October 4, 2022.

From the background information supplied by the inventors, news correspondents obtained the following quote: “Data and/or information may be stored in a plurality of different, heterogeneous data stores. This may be a function of different business units having different storage requirements and/or new data storage technologies being rolled out over time. Because of the different data stores, application developers may have to write and/or modify code to access the data and/or information stored in the heterogeneous data stores. This may lead to errors in retrieving the data and/or information, for instance, if the developers are not familiar with the format of the stored data and/or where the data is stored. This may degrade the performance of the applications, the underlying network, and/or the data stores themselves.

“Aspects described herein may address these and other problems, and generally improve the efficiency and performance of operations being performed on a plurality of heterogeneous data stores.”

Supplementing the background information on this patent, NewsRx reporters also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “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 a universal access layer that may provide an abstraction layer between applications and one or more data stores. The universal access layer may allow an application to communicate with one or more data stores while the application may employ a different data format than at least one data store. In this regard, the universal access layer may transform the request to a suitable format for the data store and reformat the response for the application. Additionally, the universal access layer may parse requests for data and/or information to determine which of the one or more data stores contain the requested information. The universal access layer may then transmit separate requests for the data and/or information to each of the data stores. In response to receiving requests from each of the data stores, the universal access layer may aggregate the responses into a single response before sending the requested data and/or information to the requester. The universal access layer described herein may improve the speed with which applications access data and/or information from a plurality of heterogeneous data stores.

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

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A method comprising: receiving, from a device, a request for information in which the requested information includes a first piece of information and a second piece of information; determining whether the request for information complies with a canonical model; determining, based on a determination that the request for information complies with the canonical model, whether the device is authorized to access the requested information; determining that the first piece of information includes personally identifiable information and the second piece of information includes insurance information data; determining, based on the device being authorized to access the requested information, a first location of the first piece of information and a second location of the second piece of information, wherein the first location and the second location are at different data stores; encrypting a first request for the first piece of information in response to the first piece of information including the personally identifiable information; transmitting the first request for the first piece of information as an encrypted request to a first data store; transmitting a second request for the second piece of information to a second data store, the second request being an unencrypted request based on the second piece of information including the insurance information data; receiving the first piece of information from the first data store; receiving the second piece of information from the second data store; combining the first piece of information and the second piece of information into a response; and transmitting, to the device, the response including the requested information.

“2. The method of claim 1, further comprising: transforming the request for information based on a determination that the request for information does not comply with the canonical model.

“3. The method of claim 1, wherein determining that the device is authorized to access the requested information further includes verifying a token received with the request for information.

“4. The method of claim 1, further comprising: denying the request for information based on a determination that the device is not authorized to access the requested information.

“5. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the first location of the first piece of information and the second location of the second piece of information further comprises: parsing the request for information to extract the request for the first piece of information and the request for the second piece of information; determining, using a look-up table, the first location of the first piece of information; and determining, using the look-up table, the second location of the second piece of information.

“6. The method of claim 1, wherein the first piece of information received from the first data store is an encrypted first piece.

“7. The method of claim 6, further comprising: decrypting the encrypted first piece of information prior to combining the first piece of information and the second piece of information into the response.

“8. The method of claim 1, further comprising: determining whether any exceptions occurred in obtaining the first piece of information and the second piece of information; and logging an exception based on one or more exceptions occurring while obtaining the first piece of information and the second piece of information.

“9. The method of claim 1, further comprising: transforming the response based on a determination that the request for information did not comply with the canonical model.

“10. The method of claim 1, further comprising: logging the request for information and the response.

“11. One or more non-transitory media storing instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform steps comprising: receiving, from a device, a request for information, wherein the requested information includes a first piece of information and a second piece of information; determining whether the request for information complies with a canonical model; determining, based on a determination that the request for information complies with the canonical model, whether the device is authorized to access the requested information; determining that the first piece of information includes personally identifiable information, and the second piece of information includes insurance information data; determining, based on the device being authorized to access the requested information, a first location of the first piece of information and a second location of the second piece of information, wherein the first location and the second location are at different data stores; encrypting a first request for the first piece of information in response to the first piece of information including the personally identifiable information; transmitting the first request for the first piece of information to a first data store; transmitting a second request for the second piece of information to a second data store as an unencrypted request based on the second piece of information including the insurance information data; receiving the first piece of information from the first data store; receiving the second piece of information from the second data store; combining the first piece of information and the second piece of information into a response; and transmitting the response including the requested information.

“12. The one or more non-transitory media of claim 11, further comprising instructions that cause the one or more processors to perform steps comprising: decrypting an encrypted first piece of information received from the first data store prior to combining the first piece of information and the second piece of information into the response.

“13. The one or more non-transitory media of claim 11, further comprising instructions that cause the one or more processors to perform steps comprising: transforming the response based on the request for information not complying with the canonical model.

“14. A method comprising: receiving, from a device, a request in which requested information includes a first piece of information and a second piece of information; determining that the request complies with a canonical model; determining, based on the request complying with the canonical model, that the device is authorized to access the requested information; determining that the first piece of information includes personally identifiable information, and the second piece of information includes insurance information data; determining, based on the device being authorized to access the requested information, a first location of the first piece of information and a second location of the second piece of information, wherein the first location and the second location are at different data stores; determining that the first piece of information should be encrypted based on the first piece of information including the personally identifiable information; determining that the second piece of information does not need encryption based on the second piece of information including the insurance information data; transmitting a first request for the first piece of information to a first data store and a second request for the second piece of information to a second data store, the first request being an encrypted request and the second request being an unencrypted request; receiving the first piece of information from the first data store and the second piece of information from the second data store; combining the first piece of information and the second piece of information into a response; and transmitting, to the device, the response including the requested information.

“15. The method of claim 14, wherein the personally identifiable information includes user information of the device, and the insurance information data includes an insurance policy.

“16. The method of claim 14, wherein: the device is a personal computing device; the first request and the second request are transmitted from an enterprise device; and the enterprise device communicates with the first data store and the second data store through a secure connection inaccessible to the personal computing device.

“17. The method of claim 14, further comprising: performing an insurance policy calculation using the first piece of information and the second piece of information, the response includes the insurance policy calculation.

“18. The method of claim 14, wherein the first data store is user information database, and the second data store is at least one of: a claims database; an underwriting database; or a rate worksheet.

“19. The method of claim 14, wherein determining that the second piece of information does not need encryption is based on the second piece of information being formatted as insurance underwriting data or as rate worksheet data.

“20. The method of claim 14, further comprising: storing, a first predetermined amount of time after receiving the second piece of information, a record of the second request and the insurance information data in a searchable format for a second predetermined period of time, the second predetermined period of time being longer than the first predetermined amount of time.”

For the URL and additional information on this patent, see: Gupta, Avinash. Universal access layer for accessing heterogeneous data stores. U.S. Patent Number 11461488, filed April 2, 2020, and published online on October 4, 2022. 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=11461488.PN.&OS=PN/11461488RS=PN/11461488

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