|
|
By Kelvin Goodson, Geoffrey Winn |
Article Rating: |
|
April 10, 2007 03:00 PM EDT |
Reads: |
34,887 |
In Part 1 of this article we introduced SDO, looking at its origins and then reviewing some of its features through a scenario based on medical investigations. In Part 2 we'll go on to examine further features of SDO in such a way as to add property values to a data object beyond those explicitly defined by its type, the ability to record changes made to the data graph, a more elegant way to create types programmatically, and the ability to extend datatypes at runtime.
Our examples will depend on two XML Schema definition files that we'll reproduce here. The full details of the scenario they represent were presented in Part 1. These listings are available at http://gemsres.com/story/dec06/313547/source.html.
Part 1 of this article was published when version 2.01 of the SDO specification was current. Since then v2.1 has been released, however, in this article we'll continue to use version 2.01 for consistency.
Adding Open Content
The scenario begun in Part 1 now unfolds a little further. In particular, we'll examine the addition of values to a DataObject by virtue of the DataObject's type being open; that is to say, the property values in addition to those defined by its type. Joe Johnson has been found to have the rare condition, Panarr Syndrome. The designers of the test's data model have made use of the generic People model described in the first XML Schema from Part 1 and this design decision was only possible because the designer of the People model made the Person type open.
Note how in the schema for the medical test there are two global elements defined, one for the test itself and one for the medical condition. When the schema is read into the SDO runtime, these elements are translated into SDO global properties, scoped in the namespace URI of the schema. They're global properties, because they're not logically part of a type. It's this kind of global property that can be used to add information to an instance of an open type.
Property conditionProperty = XSDHelper.INSTANCE.getGlobalProperty(
"www.example.org/MedicalTest", "condition", true);
DataObject condition = DataFactory.INSTANCE.create(
"www.example.org/MedicalTest", "Condition");
condition.setString("name", "Panarr Syndrome");
List conditions = person1.getList(conditionProperty);
conditions.add(condition);
In this code, SDO's XSDHelper has been used to look up the global property, and the DataFactory has been used to create a DataObject of the appropriate type. The interesting part of this code snippet is that when asked for the list of values associated with the "condition" property of the person DataObject, even though that property doesn't belong to the Person type and was never associated with the Person instance, the call to getList(conditionProperty) resulted in an empty list being created and returned. If the type of Person hadn't been open, this call would have resulted in an exception being thrown. Now we can simply add the condition to the list and any further serialization of this person instance will look like this:
<person gender="male" id="1" name="Joe Johnson Snr.">
<Test:condition name="Panarr Syndrome"/>
</person>
It's worth noting that the SDO 2.1 specification adds to the SDO's capability for handling open content metadata and instance data.
Complex Graphs and Non-Containment References
In part 1 we examined one kind of relationship between data objects, that of containment. Every data object other than the root has exactly one parent data object that's its container. However, what if we want to express other relationships? In SDO these are represented by non-containment references.
We've already seen how SDO handles containment. We'll now explore adding complexity to the data graph by using non-containment links. Given the likelihood of members of Joe's family exhibiting Panarr Syndrome we'll add a list of Joe's relatives to the test set:
DataObject relatives = test.createDataObject("relatives");
DataObject person2 = relatives.createDataObject("person");
person2.setString("id", "2");
person2.setString("name", "Joe Johnson Jnr.");
DataObject relation = person1.createDataObject("relative");
relation.set("target", person2);
relation.set("relationship", "child");
This code snippet demonstrates the building of a complex graph using a non-containment link. We've created a new person in the test's set of relatives and made a link to that person from a new "Relative" property value for person1. So now our test looks like this:
<Test:Test xmlns:Test="www.example.org/MedicalTest"
<referrals/>
<patients>
<person gender="male" id="1" name="Joe Johnson Snr.">
<relative relationship="child" target="2"/>
<Test:condition name="Panarr Syndrome"/>
</person>
</patients>
<relatives>
<person gender="male" id="2" name="Joe Johnson Jnr."/>
</relatives>
</Test:Test>
Observe how the target attribute of the relative element has a value of "2," which is the id attribute value of the person "Joe Johnson Jnr" thus establishing the relationship from father to son. Looking back at the schema for Person, note how the use of the XML Schema "ID" attribute in the definition of the Person type and the "IDREF" attribute in the "Relative" type's target element lets us make this non-containment link. Having made the link, SDO needs a bit of help from the schema author to know what kind of value to expect the non-containment link to resolve to and so the "target" attribute is qualified by an sdoxml:propertyType attribute to indicate that any referenced objects will be the type Person.
Kelvin Goodson is based at IBM Hursley in the UK as part of the Open Source SOA team. He is a committer to the Apache Tuscany incubator project, and works primarily on development of the Tuscany Java implementation of SDO. He gained a Ph.D. in image analysis and artificial intelligence in 1988, and has previously worked in the areas of medical imaging, weather forecasting and messaging middleware.
Geoff Winn is based at IBM Hursley in the UK, as part of the Open Source SOA team. He is a member of the SDO specification group and currently works on development of the Apache Tuscany C++ implementation of SDO. He has degrees in Mathematics and Computation, and has previously worked in the areas messaging and brokering middleware.
@ThingsExpo Stories By Pat Romanski  Business professionals no longer wonder if they'll migrate to the cloud; it's now a matter of when. The cloud environment has proved to be a major force in transitioning to an agile business model that enables quick decisions and fast implementation that solidify customer relationships. And when the cloud is combined with the power of cognitive computing, it drives innovation and transformation that achieves astounding competitive advantage. Apr. 23, 2018 11:15 PM EDT Reads: 2,809 | By Elizabeth White  In his session at Cloud Expo, Alan Winters, U.S. Head of Business Development at MobiDev, presented a success story of an entrepreneur who has both suffered through and benefited from offshore development across multiple businesses:
The smart choice, or how to select the right offshore development partner
Warning signs, or how to minimize chances of making the wrong choice
Collaboration, or how to establish the most effective work processes
Budget control, or how to maximize project result... Apr. 23, 2018 11:00 PM EDT Reads: 6,423 | By Elizabeth White  IoT is rapidly becoming mainstream as more and more investments are made into the platforms and technology. As this movement continues to expand and gain momentum it creates a massive wall of noise that can be difficult to sift through. Unfortunately, this inevitably makes IoT less approachable for people to get started with and can hamper efforts to integrate this key technology into your own portfolio. There are so many connected products already in place today with many hundreds more on the h... Apr. 23, 2018 11:00 PM EDT Reads: 1,128 | By Liz McMillan  Personalization has long been the holy grail of marketing. Simply stated, communicate the most relevant offer to the right person and you will increase sales. To achieve this, you must understand the individual. Consequently, digital marketers developed many ways to gather and leverage customer information to deliver targeted experiences. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Lou Casal, Founder and Principal Consultant at Practicala, discussed how the Internet of Things (IoT) has accelerated our abilit... Apr. 23, 2018 10:30 PM EDT Reads: 17,434 | By Yeshim Deniz  In his keynote at 19th Cloud Expo, Sheng Liang, co-founder and CEO of Rancher Labs, discussed the technological advances and new business opportunities created by the rapid adoption of containers. With the success of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and various open source technologies used to build private clouds, cloud computing has become an essential component of IT strategy. However, users continue to face challenges in implementing clouds, as older technologies evolve and newer ones like Docker c... Apr. 23, 2018 09:45 PM EDT Reads: 6,861 | By Liz McMillan  Data is the fuel that drives the machine learning algorithmic engines and ultimately provides the business value.
In his session at Cloud Expo, Ed Featherston, a director and senior enterprise architect at Collaborative Consulting, discussed the key considerations around quality, volume, timeliness, and pedigree that must be dealt with in order to properly fuel that engine. Apr. 23, 2018 09:45 PM EDT Reads: 22,645 | By Elizabeth White  No hype cycles or predictions of zillions of things here. IoT is big. You get it. You know your business and have great ideas for a business transformation strategy. What comes next? Time to make it happen. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Jay Mason, Associate Partner at M&S Consulting, presented a step-by-step plan to develop your technology implementation strategy. He discussed the evaluation of communication standards and IoT messaging protocols, data analytics considerations, edge-to-cloud tec... Apr. 23, 2018 07:00 PM EDT Reads: 6,025 | By Liz McMillan  In his keynote at 18th Cloud Expo, Andrew Keys, Co-Founder of ConsenSys Enterprise, provided an overview of the evolution of the Internet and the Database and the future of their combination – the Blockchain. Andrew Keys is Co-Founder of ConsenSys Enterprise. He comes to ConsenSys Enterprise with capital markets, technology and entrepreneurial experience. Previously, he worked for UBS investment bank in equities analysis. Later, he was responsible for the creation and distribution of life settl... Apr. 23, 2018 07:00 PM EDT Reads: 13,648 | By Elizabeth White  In his session at @ThingsExpo, Dr. Robert Cohen, an economist and senior fellow at the Economic Strategy Institute, presented the findings of a series of six detailed case studies of how large corporations are implementing IoT. The session explored how IoT has improved their economic performance, had major impacts on business models and resulted in impressive ROIs. The companies covered span manufacturing and services firms. He also explored servicification, how manufacturing firms shift from se... Apr. 23, 2018 05:45 PM EDT Reads: 5,837 | By Elizabeth White  IoT is at the core or many Digital Transformation initiatives with the goal of re-inventing a company's business model. We all agree that collecting relevant IoT data will result in massive amounts of data needing to be stored. However, with the rapid development of IoT devices and ongoing business model transformation, we are not able to predict the volume and growth of IoT data. And with the lack of IoT history, traditional methods of IT and infrastructure planning based on the past do not app... Apr. 23, 2018 05:30 PM EDT Reads: 7,460 | By Pat Romanski  Organizations planning enterprise data center consolidation and modernization projects are faced with a challenging, costly reality. Requirements to deploy modern, cloud-native applications simultaneously with traditional client/server applications are almost impossible to achieve with hardware-centric enterprise infrastructure. Compute and network infrastructure are fast moving down a software-defined path, but storage has been a laggard. Until now. Apr. 23, 2018 04:15 PM EDT Reads: 7,041 | By Pat Romanski  Digital Transformation is much more than a buzzword. The radical shift to digital mechanisms for almost every process is evident across all industries and verticals. This is often especially true in financial services, where the legacy environment is many times unable to keep up with the rapidly shifting demands of the consumer. The constant pressure to provide complete, omnichannel delivery of customer-facing solutions to meet both regulatory and customer demands is putting enormous pressure on... Apr. 23, 2018 02:45 PM EDT Reads: 1,470 | By Liz McMillan  The best way to leverage your CloudEXPO | DXWorldEXPO presence as a sponsor and exhibitor is to plan your news announcements around our events. The press covering CloudEXPO | DXWorldEXPO will have access to these releases and will amplify your news announcements. More than two dozen Cloud companies either set deals at our shows or have announced their mergers and acquisitions at CloudEXPO. Product announcements during our show provide your company with the most reach through our targeted audienc... Apr. 23, 2018 02:15 PM EDT Reads: 1,788 | By Elizabeth White  DXWorldEXPO LLC announced today that All in Mobile, a mobile app development company from Poland, will exhibit at the 22nd International CloudEXPO | DXWorldEXPO. All In Mobile is a mobile app development company from Poland. Since 2014, they maintain passion for developing mobile applications for enterprises and startups worldwide. Apr. 23, 2018 01:30 PM EDT Reads: 1,829 | By Elizabeth White  "Akvelon is a software development company and we also provide consultancy services to folks who are looking to scale or accelerate their engineering roadmaps," explained Jeremiah Mothersell, Marketing Manager at Akvelon, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at 21st Cloud Expo, held Oct 31 – Nov 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. Apr. 23, 2018 01:15 PM EDT Reads: 4,128 | By Yeshim Deniz  JETRO showcased Japan Digital Transformation Pavilion at SYS-CON's 21st International Cloud Expo® at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. The Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) is a non-profit organization that provides business support services to companies expanding to Japan. With the support of JETRO's dedicated staff, clients can incorporate their business; receive visa, immigration, and HR support; find dedicated office space; identify local government subsidies; get... Apr. 23, 2018 01:15 PM EDT Reads: 2,114 | By Liz McMillan  The current age of digital transformation means that IT organizations must adapt their toolset to cover all digital experiences, beyond just the end users’. Today’s businesses can no longer focus solely on the digital interactions they manage with employees or customers; they must now contend with non-traditional factors. Whether it's the power of brand to make or break a company, the need to monitor across all locations 24/7, or the ability to proactively resolve issues, companies must adapt to... Apr. 23, 2018 12:00 PM EDT Reads: 5,289 | By Liz McMillan  "We view the cloud not as a specific technology but as a way of doing business and that way of doing business is transforming the way software, infrastructure and services are being delivered to business," explained Matthew Rosen, CEO and Director at Fusion, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at 18th Cloud Expo (http://www.CloudComputingExpo.com), held June 7-9 at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. Apr. 23, 2018 12:00 PM EDT Reads: 13,289 | By Pat Romanski  DXWorldEXPO LLC announced today that the upcoming DXWorldEXPO | CloudEXPO New York event will feature 10 companies from Poland to participate at the "Poland Digital Transformation Pavilion" on November 12-13, 2018. Apr. 23, 2018 12:00 PM EDT Reads: 2,424 | By Elizabeth White  As data explodes in quantity, importance and from new sources, the need for managing and protecting data residing across physical, virtual, and cloud environments grow with it. Managing data includes protecting it, indexing and classifying it for true, long-term management, compliance and E-Discovery. Commvault can ensure this with a single pane of glass solution – whether in a private cloud, a Service Provider delivered public cloud or a hybrid cloud environment – across the heterogeneous enter... Apr. 23, 2018 11:00 AM EDT Reads: 7,137 |
|
|
|
|
|
|