System and method for integrated management of components of a resource

Abstract

Exemplary techniques are provided for defining a binding or relationship between the content of a document managed by an application and a service entity managed by an application service. The binding may enable the user to retrieve the service entity by selecting the document content within the application. The binding may comprise application metadata associated with the document content which provides a reference to the service entity, and context metadata which specifies a transformation performed on the application metadata to retrieve the service entity.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] This application is a continuation-in-part claiming benefit under 35 U.S.C. §120 of commonly assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 648,506, filed Aug. 25, 2003.FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0002] The present invention relates to the field of resource management and, more specifically, to integrating resource management between application services and applications. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0003] In conventional resource management systems, application services typically function in connection with applications. Such application services may each manage different components of a resource. For example, two application services may manage different components of a loan approval process. Specifically, a first application service may manage a credit history component of the loan approval process, while a second application service may manage a down payment component of the loan approval process. Each of the application services may mana...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

Although documents may often influence the management of service entities at the application services, there is generally limited ability to access, query, and manage service entities from within an application.

It may often be difficult, however, to identify a service entity at a application service because a document often does not provide sufficient semantics about attributes by which the service entity is defined.

The limited ability to access, query, and manage service entities from within an application is particularly cumbersome when a document influences the management of related entities from different application services.

Separately identifying of service entities at different application services is cumbersome because, even if the different service entities are related, the service entities may be defined at each application service by different sets of attributes.

Another difficulty relating to the management of service entities in conventional resource management systems is that an application typically provides limited information about the availability of actions which can be performed on service entities at the application services.

An application generally cannot determine what such rules and conditions are and whether they are satisfied.

Additionally, an application typically has limited abilities to coordinate the management of resources among multiple users according to such rules and conditions.

Specifically, an application has limited ability to track the performance of actions and to prevent or advise against the performance of actions that are invalid or likely to generate conflicts.

Furthermore, applications typically have limited ability to provide users with information about relationships between entities and processes managed by different application services and the performance of actions on such related entities by other users.

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