History Walker Interface for Time-Based Data Access
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current database access methods fail to efficiently provide historical data changes and updates, particularly in time-based data structures, which are crucial for applications like service level agreement (SLA) management, leading to inefficiencies in tracking and auditing changes over time.
Innovation Solution
A history walker interface is introduced, allowing access to time-based data structures by retrieving records and providing information on field changes, enabling 'walking' through historical updates while controlling security and identifying changed fields, and offering enhanced behavior such as walking to specific update numbers or previous updates.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If traditional database access methods are used to retrieve historical data, then data can be accessed, but the system cannot efficiently track and provide detailed information on field changes over time
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments historical data access into discrete update records, where each record represents a specific point in time with field change information. The history walker interface processes data in sequential segments (updates) rather than retrieving entire historical datasets, enabling efficient traversal through time-based changes while preserving complete field change information.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a time dimension to traditional database access by implementing a history walker that traverses records chronologically. This adds temporal navigation capability (previous/next update) to the data access model, allowing applications to move through historical states efficiently while maintaining comprehensive field change tracking.
2Reliability
If detailed historical information is provided for every field change, then complete audit trails are available, but programming overhead and run-time performance requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The history walker interface automatically manages the complexity of historical data retrieval by providing built-in navigation and field change detection capabilities. The interface self-services the application by handling update traversal, field comparison, and historical state reconstruction without requiring custom programming for each audit scenario, thereby reducing programming overhead while maintaining complete audit accuracy.
3Loss of information
If all field values are stored in every record, then complete historical information is preserved, but data storage and processing requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the changed fields from each update record rather than storing complete field values. The history walker interface identifies and retrieves only those fields that have changed since the previous update, removing redundant unchanged field data while preserving complete information about what actually changed, thereby reducing storage requirements without losing audit information.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods for a history walker interface to a time-based data structure are disclosed. A time-based data structure may contain information about updates to a set of records that change periodically over time. For example, a set of records that record state transitions of a task item as the task item progresses through its life cycle. An example task item may be represented by a change request or incident report in a help desk software application. The task item begins with an “open” state and may transition through any number of states (e.g., assigned, on-hold, test, customer response requested, etc.) on its way to ultimately being “closed” as completed. A history walker interface may assist application developers when creating applications to indicate how the task item transitioned through its different states throughout its lifecycle.