Abstract: An installer system provided according to an aspect of the present invention facilitates easy installation of software modules in a heterogeneous computing system in which many operating systems are installed in the remote systems. In an embodiment, the installer system performs different installation actions on different remote systems, depending on the specific operating system installed on the corresponding remote system and the specific software module being installed. Each installation action may be translated into one or more commands according to the syntax/semantics requirement of the respective operating system on the remote system.

Abstract: According to an aspect, the values corresponding to each group of parameters are stored in successive memory locations of a set of blocks, and pointer locations are maintained to point to the area where the groups of values are stored. When a new value is received for a parameter of a group, the values of parameters (with the new value substituted for the corresponding old value) of the group are replicated to a new set of locations in the same set of blocks if sufficient number of successive unwritten memory locations are available. A pointer data from the prior set of locations to the new set of locations is also maintained. According to another aspect, when there is insufficient space for the replication, all the present valid values of all groups are first written to a new set of blocks, and then only the earlier set of blocks are erased.

Abstract: Specifying the policies with which (portion of) an email communication is to be stored as a record, within the content of the email communication. In an embodiment, an attachment file specifies such policies in the form of XML tags. As a result, a user may merely need to attach a file specifying the desired policies, and send the email communication. In one implementation, the user specifies a pre-specified email address as a recipient to cause the email communication to be saved as a record.

Abstract: Customer relationships, particularly in a business-to-business environment, are evaluated and enhanced by generating actionable inferences through the measurement and analysis of both customer satisfaction and customer importance. Customer satisfaction information is captured from both an internal channel comprising key internal customer contacts or boundary employees, as well as an external channel comprising representatives from a plurality of identified respondent profile groups. Customer Importance is also considered in the overall analysis and interpretation of the customer satisfaction.

Abstract: Customer relationship management (CRM) system for enhanced retention of customers of a business entity. In one embodiment, a historical data corresponding to a customer is maintained in the CRM system, with the historical data including information on prior interactions between the customer and the business entity. On receiving a call from the customer, the historical data is identified and an attrition risk (indicating the probability of retaining the customer) is computed based on the identified data. Different offers based on the computed attrition risk are then determined and communicated to the customer during the call.

Abstract: Transforming source data in a source markup language to target data in a target markup language using transformation rules mapping source tags to corresponding target tags. In an embodiment, the transformation rules (e.g., in an XSL) are preprocessed to identify and store source tags (“referenced tags”), which need to be processed to apply the transformation rules of other source tags. The source tags in the source data (e.g., XML) are retrieved sequentially (e.g., by SAX parser) and the contents are stored in memory if the source tag is one of the identified referenced tags. The target tags are generated (e.g., as XML) using the contents stored in memory for another source tag matching a transformation rule immediately upon reading the source tag. Only a few of the contents of source tags and the identifiers of the referenced tags may need to be stored in memory. As a result, the memory requirements may be reduced.

Abstract: Determination of a fast route from a source node to many destination nodes. Identities of each node, and bandwidths and latencies of paths are received. A threshold bandwidth is set, and routes containing paths among nodes which have an associated bandwidth exceeding the threshold bandwidth (or within a desired range, in general) are determined. The route providing the least latency among the routes thus determined is selected. The process is repeated for other values of threshold bandwidths, and the fastest route is then determined from the routes selected for each value of threshold bandwidth considered.

Abstract: A system which enables an administrator to conveniently specify statements of a web page description which may require additional processing. The administrator may select from a list of statement types, and a language grammar corresponding to the selected statement type is displayed. The administrator may provide variable data associated with the fields of the displayed language grammar, and a rule instance is created from the language grammar and the variable data. An intermediate server may determine whether each statement of a web page description matches any of the rule instances. If a match is detected, the corresponding statement is determined to potentially require additional processing (such as modification of a URL in a reverse proxy server).

Abstract: Storing historical/previous values of a field of a relational database in the same table. The previous values can be conveniently used to revert back to any of such previously stored values. Thus, for each update/modify operation, the present value is stored as a previous value. In one embodiment, the previous values are stored in a VARRAY associated with each field. The indexed entries of the VARRAY store the present as well as previous values of the field.

Abstract: An administrator system provided according to an aspect of the present invention facilitates efficient provisioning of servers for specific software sets. In an embodiment containing clusters of servers requiring execution of corresponding set of software, an administrator system selects a server from a free server pool and installs on the selected server only those of the required set of softwares that are not already installed on the selected server. As a result, the selected server can quickly be added to a desired cluster. Such a feature is particularly useful in an environment where different application environments are provided in different cluster of systems and many servers are available in the form of free server pools for addition to the desired clusters.

Abstract: Providing enhanced control to users to populate a cache in a database system. A user provides an explicit indication indicating the specific information (available from the data stored in a storage of the database system) to be populated in the cache, and the cache is populated with the corresponding information. The information in the cache (whether due to explicit indications or otherwise) can then be used to generate results of queries, without having to access the same information from the storage of the database system.

Abstract: Garbage collection associated with a cache with reduced complexity. In an embodiment, a relative rank is computed for each cache item based on relative frequency of access and relative non-idle time of cache entry compared to other entries. Each item having a relative rank less than a threshold is considered a suitable candidate for replacement. Thus, when a new item is to be stored in a cache, an entry corresponding to an identified item is used for storing the new item.

Abstract: A search tool provided according to an aspect of the present invention maintains a cache data indicating which users are members of which dynamic groups. When a membership request is received requesting a set of dynamic groups to which a user belongs, the search tool examines the cache data to determine the set of dynamic groups to which the user belongs and sends the determined groups as a response to the membership request. According to another aspect of the present invention, the search tool may store an include list and an exclude list, respectively indicating the users to be included and excluded from each dynamic group. The lists are inspected in forming the set of dynamic groups to which the user belongs.

Abstract: Efficient generation of executable file from program files when some of the program files expressly incorporate other program files. In an embodiment, dependency information representing which program files (conditionally or unconditionally) incorporate other program files is generated and stored in a secondary (non-volatile) storage. When some program files are modified, the dependency information is used to identify for recompilation all the program files that incorporate any of the modified program files. The modified program files and the identified program files are recompiled and the executable file is regenerated.

Abstract: Facilitating debugging of business flows deployed on a production server. An aspect of the present invention processes some service requests (received from a client system) in a normal mode and some other service requests in a debug mode concurrently, all according to a business flow. According to another aspect, the debug mode supports a single step debug operation, in which each step corresponds to a single activity of the business flow. Accordingly, an administrator of the production server is enabled to better determine, the problems in the execution of business flows deployed on a production server at runtime.

Abstract: Computing the values of configuration parameters for optimal performance of associated applications. In one embodiment, a rules data is maintained indicating a corresponding rule for each of the configuration parameters of an application sought to be optimized. Each rule specifies the manner of calculation of the corresponding configuration parameter based on a corresponding set of production metrics. On receiving an indication that the value of a specific configuration parameter is to be computed, the rules data is examined and a specific rule (indicating a set of production metrics) corresponding to the specific configuration parameter is identified. The corresponding values of each of the set of production metrics are then determined and the value for the specific configuration parameter is calculated using the identified rule and the estimated values of the set of production metrics.

Abstract: An aspect of the present invention reduces the recovery time for business organizations in case of disasters. In one embodiment, a disaster recovery system containing a primary site and a backup site (implemented as a cluster) is maintained. Application instances are executed in both the primary site and the backup site, with the number of instances executed on the backup site being fewer than that executed on the primary site. During normal operation, user requests received are processed using only the instances executing in the primary site, while the instances executing in the backup site are used in a standby state. On identifying that a disaster has occurred, the user requests received immediately after identification of the disaster are processed using only the instances executing in the backup site. The cluster at the backup site is then scaled out to add application instances until a desired level/percentage is achieved.

Abstract: Simplifying a user's task in specifying a family of logics, with each logic designed to potentially select different subsets of values from the same continuous data stream at the same time instant. In one embodiment, all the logics are together specified by a common user specified software code design to accept a set of parameters, with different logics resulting from execution of the software code with different parametric values. Thus, when closely related family of logics are to be developed, the common software code may be formulated, with the code being designed to accept parameters and providing different logics for different sets of parametric values corresponding to the parameters.

Abstract: Re-executing query objects without affecting transaction data in an application development framework (ADF) not providing for creation of multiple instances of the same query object. In an embodiment, a query associated with a query object is executed to retrieve a transaction data from a data store, which can be further modified based on user interactions. In response to an indication that the query object is to be re-executed for retrieving the transaction data, a new query object is created using the query (along with any required parameters) retrieved from the original query object. The new query object is executed to retrieve a copy of the transaction data from the data store. According to another aspect, a comparison result is generated for the modified transaction data and the copy.

Abstract: An aspect of the present invention performs offline validation of data in database system for foreign key constraints. In an embodiment, a foreign key constraint defined for a database system is identified and an SQL script designed to verify whether data values stored in a foreign key column of a detail table is present in a primary key column of a master table (corresponding to the identified foreign key constraint), is generated. The SQL script is executed to determine whether the data stored in the database system satisfies the identified foreign key constraint.