Patents by Inventor Donald M. Farmer

Donald M. Farmer has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 8180748
    Abstract: The subject disclosure pertains to databases as well as generation and utilization of keys. A desired or default number of values can be requested from a domain and allocated for use. These values can be utilized to generate surrogate keys. Subsequently or concurrently, the keys can be employed with respect to operations such as single pass loading of databases and/or data warehouses. Any unused keys can be returned and made available for use by other users or processes. Furthermore, the key generation functionality can be provided outside a database thereby relieving a database system of this burden.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 3, 2010
    Date of Patent: May 15, 2012
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventor: Donald M. Farmer
  • Publication number: 20100332463
    Abstract: The subject disclosure pertains to databases as well as generation and utilization of keys. A desired or default number of values can be requested from a domain and allocated for use. These values can be utilized to generate surrogate keys. Subsequently or concurrently, the keys can be employed with respect to operations such as single pass loading of databases and/or data warehouses. Any unused keys can be returned and made available for use by other users or processes. Furthermore, the key generation functionality can be provided outside a database thereby relieving a database system of this burden.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 3, 2010
    Publication date: December 30, 2010
    Applicant: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventor: Donald M. Farmer
  • Patent number: 7844570
    Abstract: The subject invention pertains to systems and methods that facilitate generation of a database to support a multidimensional model. A database schema is generated in a top-down fashion. In particular, multidimensional structures and attributes such as cubes and dimensions can be defined. From such definition, a proposed database schema can be produced. This schema can subsequently be modified prior to or after populating the database. For example, a table or column could be added. Thereafter, the cubes and dimensions could be altered and a modified schema generated that preserves changes made to the schema. Accordingly, the subject systems and methods disclose an iterative approach that supports both top-down and bottom-up multidimensional database design.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 8, 2005
    Date of Patent: November 30, 2010
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Amir Netz, Paul J. Sanders, Donald M. Farmer, Kenneth Kwok, Ovidiu Burlacu
  • Patent number: 7801844
    Abstract: The subject disclosure pertains to databases as well as generation and utilization of keys. A desired or default number of values can be requested from a domain and allocated for use. These values can be utilized to generate surrogate keys. Subsequently or concurrently, the keys can be employed with respect to operations such as single pass loading of databases and/or data warehouses. Any unused keys can be returned and made available for use by other users or processes. Furthermore, the key generation functionality can be provided outside a database thereby relieving a database system of this burden.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 23, 2005
    Date of Patent: September 21, 2010
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventor: Donald M. Farmer
  • Patent number: 7565335
    Abstract: Systems and methods that cleanse data in Extract, Transform, Load environments (ETL), via employing an outlier detect component that is positioned in data pipeline to data warehouse(s). Such outlier detect component employs a cluster mining model to split data into normal and outlier data. Different predictive models can be employed to detect outliers in different data slices to enhance the accuracy of the predictions. In addition, a graphical user interface (GUI) enables a user to interact with cluster groups that are created and/or analyzed by the outlier detect component.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 15, 2006
    Date of Patent: July 21, 2009
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: ZhaoHui Tang, Donald M. Farmer, C. James MacLennan