Multi-system Audit Log with Context Attributes
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing methods for performing multi-system operations, such as online transactions, face challenges in maintaining consistency across loosely coupled systems without incurring performance delays or requiring operational constraint programming, and lack visibility into the business context of changes made during these operations.
Innovation Solution
The approach involves using commit logs to generate event streams that allow asynchronous execution of changes across multiple database systems, employing correlation identifiers to track and reconcile changes, and utilizing audit logs with context attributes to provide visibility into multi-system operations, thereby avoiding synchronization delays and operational constraint programming.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If two-phase commit protocol is used to ensure consistency across multiple database systems, then reliability is improved, but productivity deteriorates due to synchronization delays
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the multi-system operation into independent changeset operations that can be applied asynchronously to each database system. Instead of requiring all systems to commit simultaneously, each system receives and applies its portion of the changes independently, eliminating the synchronization bottleneck while maintaining consistency through change tracking and reconciliation mechanisms.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs preliminary actions by generating and distributing changesets to all target database systems before actual data modification occurs. The changesets are prepared in advance with all necessary information to apply changes independently, allowing systems to be pre-configured for the operation without waiting for synchronization signals from other systems.
2Reliability
If operational constraint conditions are programmed to prevent inconsistent states, then reliability is improved, but device complexity increases due to programming requirements
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements self-service mechanisms where the database system automatically tracks changes, generates change identifiers, and manages consistency without requiring external operational constraint programming. The system autonomously handles change propagation, conflict detection, and reconciliation, eliminating the need for complex constraint conditions to be manually programmed while maintaining reliability.
3Productivity
If changes are made asynchronously across multiple systems without two-phase commit, then productivity is improved, but reliability deteriorates due to potential inconsistent states
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements feedback mechanisms where each database system reports back on the status and results of applied changes. The system tracks which changesets have been successfully applied to which systems and uses this feedback information to determine if reconciliation is needed, ensuring consistency is maintained through continuous monitoring and automated correction of any detected inconsistencies.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary changeset mechanism that mediates between multiple database systems. The changeset serves as a standardized container that carries change information between systems, ensuring that all systems receive and apply the same logical changes in a consistent format, thereby maintaining reliability while enabling asynchronous operation.
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques are provided for recording, in an audit log data store, log records that satisfy one or more audit log rules. Audit log rules may be associated with one or more context attributes. Specifically, based on the context attribute of a given rule, embodiments store, in the audit log data store, additional log records that are associated with the context attribute value from log records that satisfied the rule. Because a context attribute may span multiple systems that implement a multi-system operation, the information in the audit log data store may include cross-system contextual information for changes that are of interest to administrators. The audit log data store may be efficiently queried to provide information regarding multi-system operations because of the targeted nature of the audit log data gathering techniques. Automatically-generated indexes on audit log data provide additional efficiency gains for executing queries over the audit log data.