Processing event instance data in a client-server architecture

Abstract

A process analysis system (1-300) processes event data describing real-world processes (1-100). The process analysis system performs the following acts: importing event instance data sets from an information management system (1-200), each set comprising one or more attributes describing an event instance in the real-world process (1-100); for each event instance, determining a corresponding process instance based on at least the attributes; determining event order attribute(s) for each imported event instance data set based on other event instance data sets corresponding to the same process instance; forming an analysis result set based on at least the event instance data sets and at least one first or second attribute; the client(s) presenting an analysis utilizing the analysis result set.

Description

PARENT CASE INFORMATION[0001]The present invention claims priority from commonly owned U.S. provisional patent application No. 61 / 598,935 filed 15 Feb. 2012 and titled similarly to the present application. The present invention further claims priority and from five commonly owned Finnish patent applications 20125169, 20125176, 20125170, 20125173, 20125174, all of which have been filed on 15 Feb. 2012 and which have the same title as the present invention.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The present invention broadly relates to analysing of processes in which a large amount of events take place for a large amount of process instances. Such processes can be for example logistic processes where goods and / or information is transported between locations and the transportation of goods and / or information is being tracked for business-related purposes. A logic process comprises several steps, such as negotiations between customer and service provider (wherein “service” may comprise delivery of ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The patent text describes a client-server architecture for analyzing data. This architecture helps improve efficiency, data security, and ease of installation. Additionally, the server can allow clients to define sampling criteria to select only important data, which will save time and resources during analysis.

Problems solved by technology

One of the problems associated with the environment relates to the fact that while it is generally desirable to analyse the efficiency of the logistic process 1-100 by computer-implemented analysis system 1-300, and thereby locate bottlenecks and problems spots in the logistic process 1-100, it is normally impossible to couple the computer-implemented analysis system 1-300, directly to the logistic process 1-100.

This indirect coupling, in turn, generates additional problems or questions, such as how to program the analysis system 1-300 to obtain data that is relevant to the problem of discovering bottlenecks and problem spots in the logistic process.

Another problem relates to the fact that the number of individual processes (process instances) in a typical ERP system is huge.

In addition, there is clearly technical problem of how to perform the process analysis (in the analysis system 1-300) with sufficient efficiency, such that interactive real-time analysis is possible.

On the other hand, if too much of the intermediate results are cached in the analysis system 1-300, the problem is that any changes in the events of the logistic process 1-100, or its model in the ERP system 1-200, render the cached intermediate results obsolete.

Also conducting the analysis itself may result in excluding certain source data events, making it necessary to re-calculate some or all cached values.

A yet further problem relates to the fact that computer-implemented analysis systems are effective in screening processes that, say, take a longer time to complete than what is considered normal for a process of a given type.

Yet computers have poor or no abilities to understand why a process takes an abnormally long time to complete.

Again, one should keep in mind that in addition to the high-level cognitive problem of what information should be provided to the human user, there are underlying technical problems of how to make the computer-implemented analysis system efficient enough such that interactive real-time analysis is possible.

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