Search method for a containment-aware discovery service

1. A search method for identifying from an original set of event notifications a subset of event notifications relevant for a query item, the method comprising the steps of:

providing a computer system for running a discovery service, the system comprising:

a discovery service database for storing event notifications, the discovery service database being stored in a non-transitory machine readable storage medium,

a set of event notifications stored in the discovery service database, wherein each event notification is either an object event notification or an aggregation event notification, wherein each aggregation event notification comprises an action, a timestamp, a parent identifier and a child identifier, wherein each object event notification comprises a timestamp and an object identifier, and wherein each event notification comprises an event server address to an event server comprising a corresponding event, and

a processor implementing an application logic for determining the subset, the application logic carrying out the following steps:

(A) adding to the subset each object event notification having an input identifier as object identifier and a timestamp from an input time span;

(B) adding to the subset each aggregation event notification having the input identifier as a child identifier and a timestamp from the input time span; and

(C) invoking steps (A) to (C) for each aggregation event notification that was added in the last step (B) and has addition as an action, using the parent identifier of the corresponding aggregation event notification as the input identifier, and using the time span limited by the timestamps of the first and the last aggregation event notification added in the last step (B) as the input time span.

2. The search method according to claim 1 , wherein an initial input time span is unlimited, and wherein an initial input identifier is the unique identifier representing the query item.

3. The search method according to claim 1 , wherein the subset of event notifications comprises at least all event notifications relevant for the query item represented by a unique identifier.

4. The search method according to claim 1 , wherein the original set of event notifications comprises at least all event notifications relevant for the query item represented by a unique identifier.

5. The search method according to claim 1 , wherein the original set of event notifications comprises event notifications generated by entities represented by unique identifiers, wherein the query item and containers are entities, wherein an aggregation event notification is generated every time an entity is added into another entity or deleted from another entity.

6. The search method according to claim 1 ,

wherein event notifications relevant for the query item consist of:

each object event notification having either the query item or a container containing the query item as an object identifier; and

each aggregation event notification having either the query item or a container containing the query item as a child identifier.

7. The search method according to claim 1 , wherein the search method infers the action of an aggregation event from the history of the parent identifier and the child identifier of the aggregation event.

8. A computer system for running a discovery service, the computer system comprising:

a non-transitory machine-readable medium that implements a discovery service database for storing event notifications;

a set of event notifications stored in the discovery service database for storing event notifications, wherein each event notification is either an object event notification or an aggregation event notification, wherein each aggregation event notification comprises an action, a timestamp, a parent identifier and a child identifier, wherein each object event notification comprises a timestamp and an object identifier, and wherein each event notification comprises an event server address to an event server comprising a corresponding event; and

a processor that implements an application logic for identifying from the stored set of event notifications a subset of event notifications by means of a search method, wherein the subset of event notifications comprises at least all event notifications relevant for a query item represented by a unique identifier,

wherein, for identifying the subset, the application logic is configured to carry out the following steps:

(A) adding to the subset each object event notification having an input identifier as object identifier and a timestamp from an input time span;

(B) adding to the subset each aggregation event notification having the input identifier as a child identifier and a timestamp from the input time span; and

(C) invoking steps (A) to (C) for each aggregation event notification that was added in the last step (B) and has addition as an action, using the parent identifier of the corresponding aggregation event notification as the input identifier, and using the time span limited by the timestamps of the first and the last aggregation event notification added in the last step (B) as the input time span.

9. The computer system according to claim 8 , wherein the timestamp is implemented as a chronologically ascending or descending ID.

10. The computer system according to claim 8 , wherein the action of an aggregation event is inferred from the history of the parent identifier and the child identifier.

11. A non-transitory machine-readable medium storing a computer program that when executed by a computer system for running a discovery service implements a search method for identifying from an original set of event notifications a subset of event relevant for a query item, wherein the system comprises a discovery service database for storing event notifications, the discovery service database being stored in a non-transitory machine readable storage medium, wherein a set of event notifications are stored in the discovery service database, wherein each event notification is either an object event notification or an aggregation event notification, wherein each aggregation event notification comprises an action, a timestamp, a parent identifier and a child identifier, wherein each object event notification comprises a timestamp and an object identifier, wherein each event notification comprises an event server address to an event server comprising a corresponding event, and wherein the computer program controls the computer system to execute processing comprising the following steps:

(A) adding to the subset each object event notification having an input identifier as object identifier and a timestamp from an input time span;

(B) adding to the subset each aggregation event notification having the input identifier as a child identifier and a timestamp from the input time span; and

(C) invoking steps (A) to (C) for each aggregation event notification that was added in the last step (B) and has addition as an action, using the parent identifier of the corresponding aggregation event notification as the input identifier, and using the time span limited by the timestamps of the first and the last aggregation event notification added in the last step (B) as the input time span.