Method and system for automatically maintaining the consistency of
Contents
1. US 8 428 981 B2 Sheet 11 of 13 Apr 23 2013 U S Patent 26 9l3 yoeq suoneue dxe spuas pue JuaWaja sseuisnq eu jo snjejs JuawNO y Jo s ojeuiBuo y euruuejeg 26 10MeuieJJ uononpep eu jo ajnpow uoneuriuJejep uorneuejdxe eu Sjeo pue jueuigje sseuisnq eu Ajuep AAS ysenbos uoneuejdxe ue NIY LCG q6 Sls s n uenaja uo paseq 12e peuesse y JO seouenbesuoo au euiuuejeg ELG yiomeawedy uononpep 9 pue joe peuesse ue anleday CLG senbei Buidoos e 2Ai999Y4 LLG U S Patent Apr 23 2013 Sheet 12 of 13 US 8 428 981 B2 1001 im Receiving a set of nodes and a set of nogoods HMM MM Resolving contradictions within the set of nodes 1002 Creating a set NG including all 1003 nogoods that are subsets of the set of nodes 1006 Return the current node set as solution 1005 1004 CC on No o For each node counting the K value and the N value of the node 1007 Fig 10 Sorting the nodes in descending order according to K value if two nodes tie with K value sorting them in ascending order according to N value Change the top node to its opposite 1008 node US 8 428 981 B2 Sheet 13 of 13 Apr 23 2013 U S Patent LL 614 SOLL Jaydepy YOMION ZOLL Jejdepy a6eJojs 90LL oDeJojS SSEW LOLL S Jossa90olg vOLL uiejs2. 8 implemented by rules There is only one constraint rule for one business element by using ELSE or ELSE IF state ment The status determination module 603 determines a busi ness element s actual status based on the value set by various different value sources and the priorities associated withthese sources In one embodiment the priority from high to low in resolving a confliction may be constraint manual selection pre selection default and prerequisite A value set by a higher priority value source overrides a value set by a lower priority value source For example if a Constraint rule set a business element s value as deselected while a Manual Input set the business element s value as selected the actual status of the business element is deselected As a result ifa constraint sets a business element s status the business element s status will be unchangeable until the constraint is removed In one embodiment if there is a constraint setting a business option to be deselected the relevant business option will be invisible until the constraint is removed The explanation determination module 604 determines the originator of a business element s current status Originator is a business element which is the initial cause of an associated business element s status By modifying the originator s sta tus the constraint can be removed from the associated busi ness element Thus the explanation
3. SinkRules 403 SourceRules 404 SourceRules 404 GetSourceRules 406 FIG 4 U S Patent Apr 23 2013 Sheet 6 of 13 RuleBase 50 SessionRule Base 503 Session 504 CentralRuleBase 501 US 8 428 981 B2 SessionRule Base 503 Session 504 FIG 5 U S Patent Apr 23 2013 Sheet 7 of 13 US 8 428 981 B2 Deduction Framework 203 Default Value Handler 601 Relationship Handler 602 Status Determination Module 603 Explanation Determination Module 604 Wl FIG 6 U S Patent Apr 23 2013 Sheet 8 of 13 US 8 428 981 B2 Consistency Maintenance Framework CMF 208 Preprocessing Module 701 Solution Generator 702 FIG 7 U S Patent Apr 23 2013 Sheet 9 of 13 US 8 428 981 B2 801 Create and initialize a scoping process 802 Receive a request from a client side ERP application and determine what the request is 803 804 Process the scoping request Process the explanation request FIG 8 U S Patent FIG 9a Apr 23 2013 Sheet 10 of 13 US 8 428 981 B2 901 Create a workspace object and pass control to the workspace object 902 Create a business configuration logic object and pass control to it 903 Read initial facts from the persistence 904 Determine status of other business elements based on the initial facts
4. 6 The non transitory machine readable medium of claim 5 wherein automatically generating a solution to solve the 5 inconsistency comprises identifying a business element from the plurality of busi ness elements the business element s status violating a predetermined number of rules of the plurality of rules and changing the business element s status 7 The non transitory machine readable medium of claim 6 wherein a business element s status is considered as vio lating a rule if the business element s status together with at least one other business element s status contradict with the rule 8 The non transitory machine readable medium of claim 5 wherein the selection status comprises a selected status or a deselected status 9 A system comprising 20 at least one processor and at least one memory which when executed by the at least one processor provides operations comprising maintaining a plurality of business elements each of the plurality of business elements being assigned with at least one ofa plurality of statuses comprising a selection status and a changeability status wherein at least one of the plurality of business elements comprise at least one business package wherein the at least one business package comprises at least one business option maintaining a plurality of rules wherein each of the plu rality of rules specifies at least one of a plurality of semantic relationships between at lea
5. 402 If an element 401 is a rule s condition then the rule is the element s sink rule Ifthe element 401 is a rule s consequence then the rule is the element s source rule Thus the RuleSet object 402 may include a SinkRules object 403 containing a set of the element s sink rules and a SourceRules object 404 containing a set of the element s source rules Other components can get an element s sink rules and or source rules by calling the getSinkRules inter face 405 and or the getSourceRules interface 406 with the element s ID FIG 5 illustrates a mechanism to reduce a memory size consumed by multiple instances of the rule base module for US 8 428 981 B2 7 supporting multiple users developers according to one embodiment As shown each session 504 has a RuleBase object 502 Each RuleBase object 502 has a SessionRuleBase object 503 and a reference 505 referring to a CentralRuleBase object 501 The CentralRuleBase object 501 is shared by more than one sessions 504 In one embodiment each of the references 505 is a pointer pointing to the shared Central RuleBase object 501 SessionRuleBase 503 is independent from the CentralRuleBase 501 and is only available for the particular working memory instance 503 Because CentralRuleBase object 501 is shared in memory more than one user can do operations on it at the same time When any user wants to read from or write to the Central RuleBase object 501 the user should check whether the Cen
6. CMF module 208 receives a set of rules and statuses of a set of business elements The CMF module 208 automatically detects all of the collisions and proposes solutions of solving the collisions Note that some or all of the components shown in FIG 2 may be implemented in software hardware or a combination of the both 2 1 Rule Semantics Module The rule semantics module 201 provides syntax and semantics checks to various types of rules The rule semantics module 201 parses these rules transforms them into and stores them into the persistence 206 When called by the rule base module 202 the rule semantics module 201 retrieves these rules from the persistence 206 and transforms them into in core objects Rules are associated with business elements and a rule can change the status ofthe associated business element The rule semantics module 201 parses a rule according to rule gram mars predefined Rule grammars are presented using gram mar productions FIG 3a illustrates an example of a set of rule grammars according to one embodiment Each grammar production defines a non terminal symbol and the possible expansions of that non terminal symbol into sequences of non terminal or terminal symbols In grammar productions non terminal symbols are shown in italic type and terminal symbols are shown in a bold font As shown column 301 lists the names to be defined and column 302 lists the correspond ing definitions For example constraint ru
7. a flow diagram illustrating a scoping process according to another embodiment FIG 10isa flow diagram illustrating a process ofa solution generator according to one embodiment and FIG 11 is a block diagram showing an example of a pro cessing system DETAILED DESCRIPTION A method and system for automatically configuring an Enterprise Resource Planning ERP system are described References in this specification to an embodiment one embodiment or the like mean that the particular feature structure or characteristic being described is included in at least one embodiment of the present invention Occurrences of such phrases in this specification do not necessarily all refer to the same embodiment 1 Enterprise Resource Planning System FIG 1 illustrates a network environment in which an embodiment of the invention may be implemented As shown an Enterprise Resource Planning ERP system 11 is communicatively coupled to a number of clients 12 via an interconnect 13 The interconnect 13 may be essentially any type of computer network such as a local area network LAN a wide area network WAN metropolitan area net work MAN or the Internet and may implement the Internet Protocol IP Each of the clients 12 runs a client side ERP application 14 Such an application may be for example a web based application that allows a user to login to the ERP system 11 and to work on a business configuration project A user may communica
8. determination module 604 provides a developer not only an explanation of why the associated business element has the current status but also a solution of unlock the status of the associated business ele ment For example if there are two business elements X and Y and the rule is that TF X is selected THEN Y is selected Initially both X and Y are not selected but changeable Assuming X is selected the result will be Y is selected and Y is not changeable In this example a user might want to deselect Y but this operation is not possible because of Y s changeability is No However the user may choose to list all of Y s originator s The originator in this case is X The user may deselect X so that Y s status may be changeable It is possible to have multiple originators for one business ele ment The explanation determination module 604 can find out all the originators and the paths leading to the business element s current status 2 4 Consistency Maintenance Framework CMF As introduced above the Consistency Maintenance Framework CMF module 208 detects inconsistencies of some business elements statuses and provides solutions to solve these inconsistencies FIG 7 illustrates an example of an architecture of the Consistency Maintenance Framework DMF according to one embodiment As shown the CMF 208 includes a preprocessing module 701 and a solution generator 702 The preprocessing module 701 receives a set of rules anda se
9. s BuneJedo 201 Howay US 8 428 981 B2 1 METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR AUTOMATICALLY MAINTAINING THE CONSISTENCY OF AN INFORMATION SYSTEM COPYRIGHT NOTICES A portion of the disclosure of this patent document con tains material which is subject to copyright protection The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduc tion by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclo sure as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever FIELD OF THE INVENTION At least one embodiment of the present invention pertains to Information systems and more particularly to automati cally configuring an information system BACKGROUND As Enterprise Resource Planning ERP methodology has become more popular software applications have emerged to help business managers implement ERP in business activities such as inventory control order tracking customer service finance and human resources etc Business Configuration of an ERP system requires com prehensive knowledge of the ERP system and its capabilities Specifically dependencies among different functions of the ERP system and their configurations are required in order to determine what functions need to be implemented and what system behaviour must be configured For example if a cus tomer chooses to implement the Sales Order Management function the customer must also implement the
10. set of nogoods At block 1002 the solution generator 702 resolves all contradictions within the node set A contradiction may occur if a node is not allowed For example if business element A must be selected is an ascertained fact then node A 0 must be changed to node A 1 At block 1003 the solution generator 702 creates a set NG including all nogoods that are subsets of the universal node set Continuing the example above because nogoods A 1 B 0 A 1 C 0 are subsets of the universal node set A 1 B 0 C 0 NG is A 1 B 0 A 1 C 0 um 0 jak 5 20 30 35 40 45 55 12 At block 1004 the solution generator 702 determines whether the NG set is Null meaning no nogood is a subset of the universal node set If the NG set is Null at block 1005 a K value and an H value of each node ofthe universal node set are counted The K value is the number of times a node appears in the NG set The H value is the number of times the opposite node of the node appears in the whole set of nogoods A node and its opposite node have opposite values regarding a same business element For example node A 1 s opposite node is A 0 In the above example the K values for A B and C respectively are 2 1 and 1 The H value for A B and C respectively are 0 2 and 0 However if the NG set is Null at block 1006 the current universal node set is returned as the solution At block 1007 the solution
11. Basic Sales Order and Pricing functions if the Sales Order Manage ment function depends on the Basic Sales Order function and the Pricing function Failure to implement these func tions means that the customer cannot run Sales Order Man agement function In conventional ERP systems a scoping process i e the task of determining what business functions of an ERP sys tem are required according to a customer s business require ment is handled manually by experienced highly qualified consultants by analyzing the business requirement determin ing a business solution and implementing the business solu tion by configuring the ERP system The more complicated the business system is the more difficult to implement the business solution in a purely manual fashion SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention includes a method for automatically configuring an Enterprise Resource Planning ERP system The method includes maintaining a plurality of business ele ments at an Enterprise Resource Planning ERP system The method further includes automatically determining whether statuses of the plurality of business elements are consistent with each other Other aspects of the invention will be apparent from the accompanying figures and from the detailed description which follows BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS One or more embodiments of the present invention are illustrated by way of example and n
12. LON SI fogFvoey prow o7 03123135 5I ove grove voss euge Mem moz ONY osse pue Wass aay qe Doy LOSS OXG YORS Vor p up Maweeg 0aj5 ag 0 NIH WSSU PEVORPUOD 3 Queda ejeseg eg O N3H 1 WINNS ELOR pL og dl 3513 prewegeg5 42ejes eg or N3H1 Hoss arch euo eio 3 dui ii eq pU ei AS 89 0 FASTA eU QE 208 95 88 O N3H vossacicprevagpyey 4I isamayxs aouanbasuOn NOH L LOCS EVORA dl uanonpoug 20 jayguep jusura 3 jua uim E15 pa sss Q 9g 01 ua WaS pejes 3A 0 JUSW Qe3s 3duanbasu0 Imissaid v3 10 usss d z Aen b3 Uuuisssg1dx j pug UOISsal dX3 P uog puo any 3N Aneja g ain UPI UUO peurep eq oj auew LOE U S Patent Apr 23 2013 Sheet 4 of 13 US 8 428 981 B2 309 Fi 305 303 Business Topi parting Constraint hide details in parallel 306 IF BPA Sais Order Management iS S SELECTED AND BPA Procuramet Management 5 SELECTED 307 E Er EVEN SPRUCH ET wur Ey eC nes ere tet T Us c OR F BPA Account Management 1 iS SELECTED i Liv Ropoiine IS DESELECTED 2 PEE LC 308 I i i IF BPA Sales Order Anagr sit IS NOT SELECTED OR SPA Procurem ett VERUS MY IS NOT SELECTED AND IF BPA Account Management iS NOT SELECTED 309 FIG 3b U S Patent Apr 23 2013 Sheet 5 of 13 US 8 428 981 B2 Business Element 401 Business Element 401 GetSinkRules 405 RuleSet 402 RuleSet 402 SinkRules 403
13. THEN B is selected Based on the rule a nogood A 1 B 0 is created meaning that the situation in which A is selected B is deselected should not occur If a nogood is a subset of the universal node set then it means that the universal node set is not consistent As a result the statuses of the business elements of an ERP system are inconsistent either In one embodiment the preprocessing module 701 is implemented as an Assumption based Truth Maintenance System ATMS However a person of ordinary skill in the art would appreciate that other Truth Maintenance System TMS may also be used in implementing the preprocessing module 701 The solution generator 702 receives these data elements from the preprocessing module 701 determines whether the statuses of the business elements are consistent with each other and finds a solution to solve any inconsistency if any In one embodiment the goal of the solution generator 702 is to find a solution which requires changing the least number of business elements statuses Thus the solution generator 702 needs to find the business element whose status together with other business element s s status es violate the most num ber of rules For example assuming business element A s status is selected and B s status is deselected A and B s statuses violate the rule IF A is selected THEN B is selected The solution generator 702 then changes the busi ness element s sta
14. ation logic object an instance of the business con figuration logic module 204 and transfers control to it As discussed above the business configuration logic module 204 implements the logic of controlling a scoping process After the business configuration logic object receives control from the workspace object it creates a rule base object an instance of the rule base module 202 and initializes it In one embodi ment the rule base module 202 provides the function of creating a CentralRuleBase object which organizes all rules that are shared across multiple user sessions and a Session RuleBase object which is specific to a particular user session The CentralRuleBase object is created and initialized only one time During the CentralRuleBase object s initialization the CentralRuleBase object creates an instance of the rule semantics module 201 which reads rules from the persistence 206 and encapsulates them as in core rule objects In the beginning the SessionRuleBase object does not contain any user session specific rules However with the progress of a scoping process user session specific rules will be read from the persistence 206 via an instance of the rule semantics module 201 At block 903 the business configuration logic object reads initial facts from the persistence 206 In one embodiment initial facts are default values of some of the ERP system 1 s business elements After receiving the initial facts the busi ne
15. az United States Patent Li et al US008428981B2 US 8 428 981 B2 Apr 23 2013 10 Patent No 45 Date of Patent 54 METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR AUTOMATICALLY MAINTAINING THE CONSISTENCY OF AN INFORMATION SYSTEM 75 Inventors Peisong Li Shanghai CN Peng Gao Shanghai CN Ligang Cheng Shanghai CN Mu Yu Shanghai CN 73 Assignee SAP AG Walldorf DE Notice Subject to any disclaimer the term of this patent is extended or adjusted under 35 U S C 154 b by 1541 days 21 Appl No 11 637 523 22 Filed Dec 11 2006 65 Prior Publication Data US 2008 0140475 A1 Jun 12 2008 51 Int CI G06Q 30 00 2006 01 52 U S CI USPC 7705 7 705 34 705 35 705 36 707 101 707 102 707 103 58 Field of Classification Search 705 7 34 705 35 36 707 101 102 103 See application file for complete search history 56 References Cited U S PATENT DOCUMENTS 5 878 431 A 3 1999 Potterveld et al 707 103 R 2003 0216938 A1 11 2003 Shour 705 2 Client 12 Client 12 Client side Client side ERP ERP rn Enterprise Resource Planning ERP System 11 Interface Module 106 Automatic Business Configuration Subsystem ABCS 105 i 1 Business i i Elements E BS i 102 Business Option 104 2003 0220855 Al 11 2003 Lam et al 2 705 34 2005 0262130 Al 11 2005 Mohan 707 102 2008 0104092 Al 5 2008 Cumm
16. cussed above the goal of the solution generator 702 is to find a solution which requires changing the least number of business elements statuses Thus the solution generator 702 needs to find the business element whose status together with other business element s s status es violate the most number of rules The solution generator 702 then changes the business element s status so that statuses of all business elements are becoming less inconsistent The solution generator 702 reiterates the above steps until the statuses of all business elements do not violate any of the rules It is assumed that the preprocessing module 701 has already created a universal node set based on statuses of a set of business elements and created a set of nogoods based on all the rules For example assuming an ERP system has three business elements A B and C and the ERP system has three rules restricting the three elements IF A is selected THEN B is selected IF B is selected THEN C is selected and IF A is deselected THEN B 1s deselected Further assuming the default statuses of A B and C are respectively selected deselected and deselected Thus the universal node set is A 1 B 0 C 0 The set of nogoods are A 1 B 0 B 1 C 0 A 0 B 1 and A 1 C 0 This example is continued as the process of FIG 10 is further illustrated below At block 1001 the solution generator 702 receives the universal node set and the
17. d business ele ments The deduction framework 203 also provides the function of explanation determination Explanation determination deter mines and provides reasons of a particular business element s current status e g selected or deselected For example ifaruleis defined as TF A is selected THEN B is deselected then if business element B s current status is deselected one ofthe possible reasons could be that business element A s current status is selected As shown in the example the reasoning is from the consequence to the condition of a rule thus it is called backward chaining As shown the ABCS 105 also includes a business configu ration logic module 204 The business configuration logic module 204 controls the progress of a scoping process US 8 428 981 B2 5 The workspace module 205 provides the functionality of maintaining an in core data structure storing statuses of at least some of the ERP system 11 s business elements during a scoping process The workspace module 205 also provides session and memory management Session management enables the ERP system 11 to handle multiple scoping pro cesses initiated by multiple users Memory management pro vides the function of allocation deallocation of memory blocks storing data from a workspace instance into the per sistence 206 and reading data from the persistence 206 into a workspace instance For example after a status of a business element is c
18. de ERP application 14 After the scoping request is processed the flow goes back to block 802 to wait for a new request At block 804 the ABCS 105 receives an explanation request regarding a business element s current status An explanation request may be triggered by a user choosing a 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 10 business element and clicking a button or a menu option for explanation of the chosen business element s current status via a GUI of the client side ERP application 14 The ABCS 105 determines the originator s of the business element s current status and sends the information to the client side ERP application 14 After the explanation request is pro cessed the flow goes back to block 802 to wait for a new request FIG 9a is a flow diagram illustrating a scoping process according to an alternative embodiment For example pro cess of FIG 9 may be performed as a part of block 801 of FIG 8 At block 901 the ABCS 105 creates a workspace object an instance of the workspace module 205 for the particular user and gives the control to the workspace object The workspace object organizes the session and memory space of the current scoping process initiated and controlled by the particular user It also provides an interface through which the client side ERP application 14 can communicate and or control with the scoping process At block 902 the workspace object creates a business configur
19. e change of a business element s status In one embodiment a value source may be Constraint Manual Selection Pre selection Default and Prerequisite In many cases a business element s status change may be caused by more than one value sources The priority ofthese value sources from high to low in resolving a confliction may be Constraint Manual Selection Pre selection Default and Prerequisite Defaults can be overwritten by Constraints Pre selection and Manual Selection The relationship handler 602 handles various relationships among business elements These relationships may be a pre requisite relationship a pre selection relationship a con straint etc Prerequisite is a bottom up relationship between business elements according to the hierarchy Prerequisite means if a child business element is selected then its direct parent business element is selected automatically and if a parent business element is deselected then all its child busi ness elements are deselected If a system selects a business element automatically because of prerequisite then this business element inherits the value source of its child node Prerequisites are always effec tive and can not be overruled by other value sources Constraints represent the dependency relationships that exist among various business elements There are to be selected and to be deselected constraints Constraints are 20 25 35 40 45 50 55 60 65
20. e storage adapter 1107 allows the processing system to access a storage subsystem and may be for example a Fibre Channel adapter or a SCSI adapter The network adapter 1108 provides the processing system with the ability to communicate with remote devices over a net work and may be for example an Ethernet adapter or a Fibre Channel adapter Memory 1102 and mass storage device 1106 store software instructions and or data which may include instructions and or data used to implement the techniques introduced here Thus a method and system for automatically configuring an Enterprise Resource Planning ERP system have been described Portions of what was described above may be implemented with logic circuitry such as a dedicated logic circuit or with a microcontroller or other form of processing core that executes program code instructions Thus processes taught by the dis cussion above may be performed with program code such as machine executable instructions that cause a machine that executes these instructions to perform certain functions In this context a machine may be a machine that converts intermediate form or abstract instructions into processor specific instructions e g an abstract execution environment such as a virtual machine e g a Java Virtual Machine an interpreter a Common Language Runtime a high level lan guage virtual machine etc and or electronic circuitry dis posed on a semiconduc
21. em of claim 12 wherein a business element s status is considered as violating a rule if the business element s status together with at least one other business element s status contradict with the rule 14 The processing system of claim 9 wherein the selection status comprises a selected status or a deselected status 15 The method of claim 1 wherein the generating further comprises determining at a solution generator of a enterprise resource planning system the solution to solve the inconsistency based on changing the at least one of the plurality of statuses of a least number of the plurality of business elements and wherein the at least one proces sor comprises the enterprise resource planning system ORE ee ee ee
22. etermines what other business elements need to be selected and implemented so that the resulting system is functionally complete with respect to the business requirement The determinations are sent back to the client side ERP application 14 which displays each corresponding business elements in a mode according to the determination in a GUI For example if a business element s status is determined to be selected the business element is displayed by the client side ERP application 14 in a mode telling a user that the business element is currently selected The user may manipulate the GUI of the client side ERP application 14 by selecting or deselecting a business element therefore triggers the ABCS 105 to determine the conse quences of the change of status of the user selected business element consequence may be for example a change of status of another business element The consequences are sent back to the client side ERP application 14 for updating the GUI Note that some or all of the components as shown in FIG 1 may be implemented in software hardware or a com bination of both 2 Automatic Business Configuration Subsystem FIG 2 illustrates an example of an architecture of an auto matic business configuration subsystem ABCS according to one embodiment As shown the ABCS 105 includes a rule semantics module 201 The rule semantics module 201 pro 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 4 vides s
23. generator 702 sorts the nodes in descending order according to K value If two nodes tie with their K value the solution generator 702 sorts them in ascend ing order according to their N value In the above example the result of the sort is A C B At block 1008 the solution generator 702 replaces the top node in the universal node set with its opposite node After block 1008 the process goes back to block 1002 In the above example A 0 replaces A 1 in the universal node set A 1 B 0 C 0 Thus the universal node set becomes A 0 B 0 C 0 During the second round process the NG set is Null Then the universal node set A 0 B 0 C 0 is returned as a solution FIG 11 is a block diagram showing an example of a data processing system that may be used with one embodiment of the invention The hardware architecture may apply to both the clients 12 and or the ERP system 11 of FIG 1 Certain standard and well known components which are not germane to the present invention are not shown The processing system includes one or more processors 1101 coupled to a bus system 1103 The bus system 1103 in FIG 3 is an abstraction that rep resents any one or more separate physical buses and or point to point connections connected by appropriate bridges adapters and or controllers The bus system 1103 therefore may include for example a system bus a Peripheral Com ponent Interconnect PCI bus a HyperTransport or industry standard archi
24. hanged by the deduction framework 203 the workspace module 205 may update the status of the business element stored in the persistence 206 The ABCS 105 may include a rebuilder module 207 At a certain point ofa user s scoping process the rebuilder module 207 provides the function to enable the user to save the current scoping process as image data in the persistence 206 or a different database Later upon the user s request the rebuilder module 207 may rebuild the scoping process into memory from the image data saved in the persistence 206 so that the user may continue the scoping process from the point where it is saved The Consistency Maintenance Framework CMF module 208 detects inconsistencies of some business elements sta tuses and provides solutions to solve these inconsistencies An inconsistency may be caused by different reasons For example after a business element s status is fixed a rule is changed A consequence of the change is that the business element s status must be changed Thus the rule change causes a collision i e an inconsistency Another example when two developers are working on different aspect of a same scoping project their workspaces need to be merged into a final workspace An assumption is that both of their works are based on a same set of rules However during the merge a same business element may have two different sta tuses Thus the merge causes a collision In one embodiment the
25. hoose a consequence of a rule and the GUI component 309 shows the condition of the rule A user may check the check box 310 shown in front of the dropdown list 308 and click on the remove button 307 to remove the rule A user may also click on the dropdown list 308 to highlight the rule to display it in the detailed section 304 The detailed section 304 displays the rule selected in the brief section 303 The detailed section 304 displays the selected rule in multiple rule sections 313 each section 313 representing a singular condition Additionally the detailed section 304 provides a button 311 for adding a new rule section 313 and a button 312 to remove a selected existing rule section 313 Within each rule section 313 there is a GUI component 314 allowing a user to select another business element and a dropdown list 315 to select a status for the selected another business element There is also a check box 316 within the rule section 313 A user may check the check box 316 for removal Note that GUI as shown in FIG 36 is described for illustration purposes only Other configuration or layouts may also be applied 2 2 Rule Base Module As introduced above the rule base module 202 shown in FIG 2 organizes all rules as objects in memory for quick access FIG 4 is a block diagram illustrating an instance of the rule base module in memory according to one embodi ment As shown each business element 401 is associated with a RuleSet object
26. ins 707 101 OTHER PUBLICATIONS Webpage entitled IBM ILOG accessed from the Internet at lt http www ilog com gt Nov 29 2012 Webpage entitled Drools JBoss Community accessed from the Internet at lt http www jboss ort drools gt Nov 29 2012 cited by examiner Primary Examiner Nga B Nguyen 74 Attorney Agent or Firm Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo P C 57 ABSTRACT An Enterprise Resource Planning ERP system maintains a plurality of business elements Each of the business elements represents a business function that may or may not be needed depending on a customer s business requirement A scoping process is a process which determines what business ele ments are required according to the customer s business requirement and the relationships exist among some of the business elements The ERP system provides an automatic business configuration subsystem The automatic business configuration subsystem maintains a set of rules Each of the rules representing a relationship between two business ele ments maintained at the ERP system The automatic business configuration subsystem automatically determines which business elements are required and need to be implemented based on the set of rules The automatic business configura tion subsystem may also automatically determine whether statuses of the business elements are consistent with each other in view of the rules 15 Clai
27. le is defined as 20 40 45 50 55 60 65 IF Conditional Expression THEN Consequence Statement IF Conditional Expression THEN To Be Select Statement ELSE To Be Deselect Statement IF Conditional Expression THEN To Be Select Statement ELSE IF Conditional Statement THEN To Be Deselect Statement In one embodiment the rule grammars are specified by a user via an interface These specified grammars may be stored in a database the persistence 206 for example When the system is initialized these specified grammars are read from the database and presented as in core grammar objects The rule semantics module 201 uses these in core grammar objects to parse a rule In one embodiment a user may input rules into the ERP system 11 via the client side ERP application 14 The rule semantics module 201 parses the rules transforms the rules into a unified format and stores the rules into the persistence 206 FIG 35 illustrates an example of a Graphic User Inter face GUI through which a user may input a rule into an ERP system such as system 11 As shown the GUI has a brief section 303 and a detailed section 304 The title 305 of the brief section 303 indicates the business element with which the current GUI is concerned The brief section 303 provides a button 306 for adding a new rule for the business element and a button 307 for removing a rule already created for the business element The dropdown list 308 allows a user to c
28. lemented based on the business requirement and dependency relations among these business elements In one embodiment the ERP system 11 may include an automatic business configuration subsystem ABCS 105 The ABCS 105 models the dependency relations as rules A rule dictates whether particular business elements require or exclude other business elements Here the status of a busi ness element includes two aspects The first aspect is the business element s selection status The value of a selection status may be selected or deselected The second aspect is the business element s changeability status The value of a changeability status may be changeable or nonchange able If a business element s selection status is selected functions related to the business element need to be imple mented during the configuration process If a business element s selection status is deselected functions related to the business element are not needed If a business element s changeability status is changeable a user or a process may change the business element s selection status Otherwise the selection status of the business element cannot be changed Initially some particular business elements are selected either by default of by a user s manual selection via an interface for example These initial statuses of some busi ness elements are called initial facts Based on the initial facts and rules the ABCS 105 automatically d
29. mories random access memories static dynamic or other optical disks CD ROMs DVD ROMs EPROMs EEPROMs magnetic or optical cards or other type of machine readable media suitable for storing electronic instructions Program code may also be down loaded from a remote computer e g a server to a requesting computer e g a client by way of data signals embodied in a propagation medium e g via a communication link e g a network connection Logic as is used herein may include for example soft ware hardware and or combinations of hardware and soft ware Although the present invention has been described with reference to specific exemplary embodiments it will be rec ognized that the invention is not limited to the embodiments 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 14 described but can be practiced with modification and alter ation within the spirit and scope of the appended claims Accordingly the specification and drawings are to be regarded in an illustrative sense rather than a restrictive sense What is claimed is 1 A method comprising maintaining a plurality of business elements each of the plurality of business elements being assigned with at least one ofa plurality of statuses comprising a selection status and a changeability status wherein at least one of the plurality of business elements comprise at least one business package wherein the at least one business package comp
30. ms 13 Drawing Sheets Interface Module 4 automatic Business Configuration Subsystem ABCS 105 Workspace Module 205 E Business Configuration Logic Module 204 Deduction Framework 203 Ld Rule Base Module 202 Rule Semantics Module 201 A Persistence 208 Consistency Maintenance Rebuilder Module 207 Framework CMF 208 U S Patent Apr 23 2013 Sheet 1 of 13 US 8 428 981 B2 Client 12 Client 12 Client side Client side ERP in ERP application application 14 14 Enterprise Resource Planning ERP System 11 Interface Module 106 Automatic Business Configuration Subsystem ABCS 105 Business Elements 101 Business Package Business 102 Topic 103 Business Option 104 Fig 1 U S Patent Apr 23 2013 Sheet 2 of 13 US 8 428 981 B2 Interface Module A 106 Automatic Business Configuration Subsystem ABCS 105 Y Workspace Module 205 Business Configuration Logic Module 204 Deduction Framework 203 Rule Base Module 202 Rule Semantics Module 201 Consistency Maintenance Rebuilder Module 207 Framework CMF 208 ee el FIG 2 Persistence 206 US 8 428 981 B2 Sheet 3 of 13 Apr 23 2013 U S Patent eg Old 03193173830 3138 03123138 4138 USHER DOSS APIO UaWNeaje Dajsc ag o MOUSSA DAS YO VARS AOS py 03193139
31. o the ABCS 105 separately from the scoping request At block 912 the business configuration logic object cre ated during initialization receives the asserted fact from the workspace object and calls an instance of the deduction framework module 203 At block 913 the instance of the deduction framework module 203 determines the consequences of the asserted fact A consequence may be for example a change of status of a business element Then these consequences are sent back to the client side ERP application 14 FIG 9c is a flow diagram illustrating a scoping process according to another embodiment For example the process of FIG 95 may be performed as a part of block 804 of FIG 8 At block 921 the ABCS 105 receives an explanation request regarding a business element At block 922 the business configuration logic object created during initialization receives the explanation request and the identity of the busi ness element The business configuration logic object calls the instance of the deduction framework module 203 At block 923 the instance of the deduction framework module 203 determines the originators of the current status of the business element composes explanations and sends the explanations back to the client side ERP application 14 FIG 10 is a flow diagram illustrating a process ofa solution generator according to one embodiment For example the process may be performed by processing logic as shown in FIG 7 As dis
32. om selected to deselected Changeability determination refers to determining whether a particular business element s status may currently be changed for example from selected to deselected The deduction framework 203 triggers the change deter mination and or changeability determination functions in response to receiving an asserted fact An asserted fact refers to a status change of a business element caused by a user s selection or deselection of the business element via the client side ERP application 14 Note that a fact may also be asserted by a process The deduction framework 203 matches the asserted fact with the conditions of available rules to deter mine the consequences A consequence may be for example another business element s status must be changed because of the asserted fact For example assuming a rule is specified as IF X is selected AND Y is selected THEN M is selected Assuming further that X s current status is selected and Y s status has just been changed into selected because a user manually selected Y for example from a GUI of a client side ERP application 14 Therefore M s current status should be selected because ofthe condition ofthe above rule becomes true Because the above reasoning is from a rule s condition to the rule s consequence it is called forward chaining Based on the determined consequences the deduction framework 203 updates the status of each of the affecte
33. ot limitation in the figures 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 2 ofthe accompanying drawings in which like references indi cate similar elements and in which FIG 1 illustrates a network environment in which an embodiment of the invention may be implemented FIG 2 illustrates an example of an architecture of an Auto matic Business Configuration Subsystem ABCS FIG 3a illustrates an example of a set of rule grammars according to one embodiment FIG 36 illustrates an example of a Graphic User Interface GUI through which a user may input a rule into an ERP system according to one embodiment FIG 4 is a block diagram illustrating an instance of the rule base module in memory according to one embodiment FIG 5 illustrates a mechanism to reduce a memory size consumed by multiple instances of the rule base module for supporting multiple users developers according to one embodiment FIG 6 illustrates an example of an architecture of a deduc tion framework according to one embodiment FIG 7 illustrates an example of an architecture of the Consistency Maintenance Framework DMF according to one embodiment FIG 8 is a flow diagram illustrating an example ofa scop ing process according to one embodiment FIG 9a is a flow diagram illustrating a scoping process according to an alternative embodiment FIG 9b is a flow diagram illustrating a scoping process according to another embodiment FIG 9c is
34. other business element s status contradict with the rule 4 The method of claim 1 wherein the status is either a selected status or a deselected status 5 A non transitory machine readable medium having instructions when executed cause a machine to perform a method the method comprising maintaining a plurality of business elements each of the plurality of business elements being assigned with at least one ofa plurality of statuses comprising a selection status and a changeability status wherein at least one of the plurality of business elements comprises at least one business package wherein the at least one business package comprising at least one business option maintaining a plurality of rules wherein each of the plu rality of rules specifies at least one of a plurality of semantic relationships between at least two of the plu rality of business elements determining whether the at least one of the plurality of statuses of the plurality of business elements are consis tent with each other based on the at least one of the plurality semantic relationships among the plurality of business elements and whether the at least one of the plurality of statuses ofthe plurality of business elements violate at least one of the plurality of rules and US 8 428 981 B2 15 generating a solution to solve an inconsistency when the at least one of the plurality of statuses of the plurality of business elements are inconsistent
35. rises at least one business option maintaining a plurality of rules wherein each of the plu rality of rules specifies at least one of a plurality of semantic relationships between at least two of the plu rality of business elements determining whether the at least one of the plurality of statuses of the plurality of business elements are consis tent with each other based on the at least one of the plurality of semantic relationships among the plurality of business elements and whether the at least one of the plurality of statuses ofthe plurality of business elements violate at least one of the plurality of rules and generating a solution to solve an inconsistency when the at least one of the plurality of statuses of the plurality of business elements are inconsistent wherein at least one of the maintaining the plurality of business elements the maintaining the plurality of rules the determining and the generating are implemented on at least one processor 2 The method of claim 1 wherein automatically generat ing a solution to solve the inconsistency comprises identifying a business element from the plurality of busi ness elements the business element s status violating a predetermined number of rules of the plurality of rules and changing the business element s status 3 The method of claim 2 wherein a business element s status is considered as violating a rule if the business element s status together with at least one
36. ss configuration logic object calls an instance of the deduc tion framework module 203 to determine the statuses of other business elements At block 904 the instance of the deduction framework module 203 determines other business elements statuses based on the initial facts These statuses are sent back to the client side ERP application 14 If a business element s status is selected the client side ERP application 14 will display the business element as selected If a business element s status is deselected the client side ERP application 14 will display it as deselected If a business element s changeability is No meaning the business element s status cannot be changed at the moment the client side ERP application 14 will either hide it or display it in a mode a user cannot select or deselect it FIG 96 is a flow diagram illustrating a scoping process according to another embodiment For example the process of FIG 95 may be performed as a part of block 803 of FIG 8 At block 911 a scoping request is received by the ABCS 105 In one embodiment the ABCS 105 receives the scoping request via a workspace object binding with a client side ERP application 14 A user may select or deselect a particular US 8 428 981 B2 11 business element via a GUI provided by the client side ERP application and triggers a scoping request The scoping request may include an asserted fact Alternatively the asserted fact may be sent t
37. st two of the plu rality of business elements determining whether the at least one of the plurality of 35 statuses of the plurality of business elements are consis tent with each other based on the at least one of the plurality of semantic relationships among the plurality 25 30 16 of business elements and whether the at least one ofthe plurality of statuses ofthe plurality of business elements violate at least one of the plurality of rules and generating a solution to solve an inconsistency when the at least one of the plurality of statuses of the plurality of business elements are inconsistent 10 The system of claim 9 wherein the mass storage device further maintains a plurality of rules wherein each of the plurality of rules specifies a relationship between at least two of the plurality of business elements 11 The system of claim 10 wherein determining whether statuses of the plurality of business elements are consistent with each other comprises determining whether the plurality of statuses ofthe plurality of business elements violate at least one of the plurality of rules 12 The system of claim 10 wherein automatically gener ating a solution to solve the inconsistency comprises identifying a business element from the plurality of busi ness elements the business element s status violating a predetermined number of rules of the plurality of rules and changing the business element s status 13 The syst
38. t of business elements The preprocessing module 701 cre ates data elements that may be processed by the solution generator 702 based on these rules and business elements Among these business elements some business elements statuses are ascertained In other words these business ele ments statuses have been verified or confirmed to be correct Such statuses are called ascertained statuses and may be used as the basis to detect inconsistency In one embodiment the preprocessing module 701 creates a data element called node for each business element A node is a fact with defined value of true or false For example if business element A s status is selected a node A 1 1 representing true is created assuming selected status is true The preprocessing module 701 processes all of the busi ness elements ofan ERP system and creates a set to include all of the nodes created Such a set is called the universal node US 8 428 981 B2 9 set For example assuming there are four business elements A B C and D Further assuming A s status is selected B s status is selected C s status is deselected and D s status is deselected Then the universal node set would be A 1 B 1 C 0 D 0 The preprocessing module 701 creates a set of nogoods based on a set of rules A nogood is a set of nodes which cannot exist simultaneously or be coexistent For example ifa rule is specified as IF A is selected
39. te with the ERP system 11 by submit ting commands and receiving results or instructions through an interface provided by the client side ERP application 14 In one embodiment such an interface is a Graphic User Interface GUI The ERP system 11 provides a set of business elements 101 Each business element 101 may be a business package 102 a business topic 103 ora business option 104 A business package 102 may include a set of business topics 103 A US 8 428 981 B2 3 business topic 103 may include a set of business options 104 For example an ERP system may provide Sales Order Man agement business package The Sales Order Management business package may include business topics such as Sales Order Quotation Pricing and Product Configuration etc The business topic Pricing may include business options such as Standard Pricing Seasonal Goods etc As a result of a business requirement the function of a business element may depend on the function of another business element In that case a dependency relationship exists between the two business elements In known prior art ERP systems a user needs to manually determine what busi ness elements need to be selected and implemented based on business requirements and dependency relations among these business elements The present invention includes an ERP system which may automatically determine what business elements need to be selected and imp
40. tecture ISA bus a small computer system interface SCSI bus a universal serial bus USB or an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers IEEE stan dard 1394 bus sometimes referred to as Firewire The processors 1101 are the central processing units CPUs of the processing system and thus control the overall operation of the processing system In certain embodiments the pro cessors 1101 accomplish this by executing software stored in memory 1102 A processor 1101 may be or may include one or more programmable general purpose or special purpose microprocessors digital signal processors DSPs program mable controllers application specific integrated circuits ASICs field programmable gate arrays FPGAs program mable logic devices PLDs or the like or a combination of such devices The processing system also includes memory 1102 coupled to the bus system 43 The memory 1102 represents any form of random access memory RAM read only memory ROM flash memory or a combination thereof Memory 1102 stores among other things the operating sys tem 1104 of processing system Also connected to the processors 1101 through the bus system 1103 are a mass storage device 1106 a storage adapter 1107 and a network adapter 1108 Mass storage device 1106 may be or include any conventional medium for storing large quantities of data in a non volatile manner such as one or US 8 428 981 B2 13 more disks Th
41. tor chip e g logic circuitry imple mented with transistors designed to execute instructions such as a general purpose processor and or a special purpose processor Processes taught by the discussion above may also be performed by in the alternative to a machine or in com bination with a machine electronic circuitry designed to perform the processes or a portion thereof without the execution of program code Itis believed that processes taught by the discussion above may also be described in source level program code in various object orientated or non object orientated computer pro gramming languages e g Java C VB Python C C J APL Cobol ABAP Fortran Pascal Perl etc supported by various software development frameworks e g Microsoft Corporation s NET Mono Java Oracle Corporation s Fusion etc The source level program code may be con verted into an intermediate form of program code such as Java byte code Microsoft Intermediate Language etc that is understandable to an abstract execution environment e g a Java Virtual Machine a Common Language Runtime a high levellanguage virtual machine an interpreter etc or a more specific form of program code that is targeted for a specific processor An article of manufacture may be used to store program code An article of manufacture that stores program code may be embodied as but is not limited to one or more memories e g one or more flash me
42. tralRuleBase object 501 is locked by any other user If the CentralRuleBase object 501 is locked by another user the user should wait until the CentralRuleBase object 501 is unlocked 2 3 Deduction Framework The deduction framework 203 is the module which handles all different relationships in a scoping process FIG 6 illus trates an example ofan architecture ofa deduction framework according to one embodiment As shown the deduction framework 203 includes a default value handler 601 a rela tionship handler 602 a status determination module 603 and an explanation determination module 604 The default value handler 601 manages default values for business elements Default value defines the initial value i e selected or deselected of a business element Default value is often set for high level business elements business packages for example In general the default value of all business elements is deselected A user can optionally define a rule to set the default value to be selected In an embodiment defaults are effective only if there is no other value source setting the status of a business element For example assuming business topic Pricing is selected but no business option of Pricing has been selected yet In this case the system evaluates the default rules of the business options of Pricing and selects one or more business options Value source is defined as the source that causes th
43. tus so that statuses of all business elements are becoming less inconsistent The solution generator 702 reiterates the above steps until the statuses of all business elements do not violate any of the rules In one embodiment the solution generator 702 also pro vides user friendly explanations for a developer to help the developer solve the inconsistencies more quickly 3 Processing Flows FIG 8 is a flow diagram illustrating an example of a scop ing process according to one embodiment Note that process of FIG 8 may be performed by processing logic which may include software hardware or a combination of both At block 801 a new scoping process is created and initialized A scoping process may be created by a user via a GUI of the client side ERP application 14 For example the GUI may provide a button or a menu option allowing a user to new a scoping process At block 802 the ABCS 105 of the ERP system 11 receives a request from the client side ERP application 14 The ABCS 105 determines what the request is If the request is a scoping request the flow goes to block 803 If the request is for an explanation of a business element s current status the flow goes to block 804 At block 803 the ABCS 105 processes the scoping request A scoping request may be triggered by a user asserting a fact A fact may be asserted when a user choose to select or dese lect a business element such as a business option via a GUI of the client si
44. yntax and semantics checks to rules In one embodi ment a user may input rules into the ERP system 11 via the client side ERP application 14 The rule semantics module 201 parses the rules transforms the rules into a unified for mat and stores the rules into the persistence 206 When called by the rule base module 202 introduced below the rule semantics module 201 retrieves these rules from the persis tence 206 and transforms them into in core rule objects Here the term in core means in a main memory of a processing system The rule semantics module 201 also does redundant and collision checks for the rules stored in the persistence 206 Redundant checks prevent redundant rules in the persis tence Collision checks detect conflicting rules and recursive rules The ABCS 105 further includes a rule base module 202 After rules are encapsulated as in core objects by the rule semantics module 201 the rule base module 202 organizes these objects so that they may be easily accessed or searched by other components The deduction framework 203 is the module which handles all different relationships in a scoping process These rela tionships may include but not limited to constraint pre selection prerequisite etc The deduction framework 203 may also handle change determination and changeability determination Change determination refers to determining whether a particular business element s status should be changed for example fr
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