Generic lifecycle management of entity in hierarchy according to status

摘要

Lifecycle of an entity residing within a hierarchy, may be managed according to corresponding status identifiers of a ruleset referenced by an engine. At design time, particular embodiments determine a finite set of fundamental statuses common to the entities, and covering the full lifecycle of each entity. A ruleset is created comprising rules accounting for each change in the status of the entity over its lifetime within the hierarchy. The status may be indicated by status identifiers, that in some embodiments are stored within a database. During runtime, an engine receives information from the entity. The engine references the ruleset including the status identifier information, and then propagates the status change of the entity to other entities in the same or different hierarchy levels based upon the ruleset. In this manner, the lifecycle of an entity within a hierarchy can be managed according to its status.

主权项

1. A computer-implemented method comprising:
causing an engine to receive from a first entity belonging to a hierarchy, information regarding a lifecycle change of the first entity from a first status to a second status associated with an event, wherein the first entity comprises a step of a process; in response to the information, causing the engine to reference a rule of a predefined ruleset stored in a hardware server as a database table comprising rows and columns, the rule comprising a row and a status identifier comprising a first column; and based upon the rule, causing the engine to propagate the second status to change a status of a second entity belonging to the hierarchy, wherein the second entity comprises the process and wherein: a second column of the table comprises a new status identifier used to handle the event with specific programming comprising propagating a generic error status identifier to indicate an error for the step and another error for a different step of the process.