International Business Machines Corporation

Douglas Warren McDavid

Richard Dale Hoffman

Verlyn Mark Johnson

Dorothy Irene Mazina

Robert Edward Bachman

Myron Dale Flickner

Arnon Amir

Jennifer Quirin Trelewicz

James Clinton Spohrer

Ankur Chandra

Jorge L C Sanz

A method for managing a usage cost of an asset. A user component of a business entity may access the asset after the asset has been developed by a development component of the business entity, wherein the user component receives compensation from a compensator in response to the user component having incurred a usage burden from using the asset, and wherein the compensator may have contributed to the usage burden. Alternatively, a user component of a second business entity may access an asset after the asset is developed by a development component of a first business entity, wherein second business entity receives compensation from the first business entity in response to the user component having incurred a usage burden from using the asset. The compensation has a magnitude that is a function of the usage burden. The asset may be a software application.

Management of usage costs of a resource

A method and system for analyzing impact of change in an organizational entity. A graph H includes nets, nodes of the nets, edges connecting the nodes, and edge weights for the edges. The edge weights denote changes in some nodes resulting from changes in other nodes. For a given set Z of nodes A and for each node B characterized by a set S of at least one path of edges connecting nodes of H from node A to node B for each node A of Z, a measure M(Z,B) of a change in node B resulting from a change in each node A of Z is determined. M(Z,B) is a function of the edge weights in each path of S. Each node B of H is displayed via a graphical representation G(B) assigned to each node B. G(B) is a function of M(Z,B).

Analysis of impact of change in an organizational entity

A system for generating and retrieving relevant electronic information required by a user initiating an electronic search on the system. The system comprise a user-interactive search engine and a knowledge database, which stores knowledge information that is formatted. Additionally, the system includes a plurality of functional software modules that enables a user to complete an interactive search and find a solution to a task based on entered context information and keywords. A list of keywords are displayed to the user and the user selects those keywords that are relevant to the solution desired. The search engine looks for the articles containing the identified keywords. If no article is found with the search terms, the search is expanded to the Internet. The user may then modify the information returned from the Internet, format the information and save the information as a new recipe.

Search engine facility with automated knowledge retrieval, generation and maintenance

A method for real-time automated maintenance of an electronic database. A value parameter is associated with each data component. The use history of each of the individual data components is tracked using the value parameter. A set number of points is assigned to each data component each time the component is retrieved in response to a user-entered search request. The set number of points is added to the value parameter. A minimum threshold value is established and at pre-determine time intervals a check is made to determine if any data component within the database fails to accumulate at least a minimum threshold number of points. Data components that have not accumulated the minimum number of points are removed from the database. When a new data component is added to the database, a default point value is assigned to the value parameter of the new component.

Automated maintenance of an electronic database via a point system implementation

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Elk Grove, CA, United States of America

Douglas Warren McDavid