Facilitating data transformations

• US 10,621,195 B2
• Filed: 09/20/2016
• Issued: 04/14/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 09/20/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: He, Yeye, Ganjam, Kris, Narasayya, Vivek Ravindranath, Chaudhuri, Surajit
• Primary Examiner(s): Alam, Shahid A
• Application Number:
  US15/271,154
• Publication Number:
  US 20180081954A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,302 Days
• Field of Search: 707756
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/211 Schema design and management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/245 Query processing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/258 Data format conversion from or to a database
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/604 Tools and structures for managing or administering access control systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 5/025 Extracting rules from data

Abstract

Methods, computer systems, computer-storage media, and graphical user interfaces are provided for facilitating data transformations, according to embodiments of the present invention. In one embodiment, a set of example values including example input values that indicate data values to be transformed and example output values that indicate a desired form in which to transform data. Based on the set of example values, a data transformation function that is relevant to the set of example values is identified. The data transformation function is used to generate a transformation program to transform the example input values to the desired form in which to transform data. A suggestion of the transformation program can be provided to a user device, wherein selection of the transformation program suggestion results in a data transformation.

Claims

1. A computing system comprising:

a processor; and

computer storage memory having computer-executable instructions stored thereon which, when executed by the processor, configure the computing system to facilitate data transformations, the computing system configured to;

receive a set of example values including one or more example input values that indicate data values to be transformed and one or more example output values that indicate a desired form in which to transform data;

based on at least a portion of the set of example values, identifying a data transformation function that is relevant to the set of example values;

generating a transformation program that uses the data transformation function and a supplemental transformation tool to transform the one or more example input values to the desired form in which to transform data, wherein the supplemental transformation tool is utilized based on a determination that the data transformation function does not result in the desired form in which to transform data, and wherein the supplemental transformation tool is applied to an output value of the data transformation function; and

providing a suggestion of the transformation program, wherein selection of the transformation program suggestion results in a data transformation.

2. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the set of example values is received from a user device based on a user selection of the set of example values.

3. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the data transformation function is identified as relevant to the set of example values based on a comparison of at least one of the one or more example input values to one or more calling input examples associated with the data transformation function.

4. The computing system of claim 3, wherein the at least one of the one or more example input values matches at least one of the one or more calling input examples.

5. The computing system of claim 3, wherein the at least one of the one or more example input values corresponds with a calling pattern associated with at least one of the one or more calling input examples.

6. The computing system of claim 1 further comprising collecting the data transformation function based on a web search or enterprise search in which the data transformation function is identified as a candidate transformation function.

7. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the supplemental tool comprises a second transformation function, a transformation table, a transformation service, or a transformation operator.

8. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the supplemental transformation tool performs a syntactic transformation.

9. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the supplemental transformation tool is identified by:

executing the data transformation function using an example input value to obtain an output value from the data transformation function;

based on a comparison of the output value resulting from execution of the data transformation to one of the example output values, identifying the supplemental transformation tool to use with the data transformation function that obtains the desired form in which to transform data.

10. A computer-implemented method for facilitating data transformations, the method comprising:

receiving a set of example values including one or more example input values that indicate data values to be transformed and one or more example output values that indicate a desired form in which to transform data;

based on at least a portion of the set of example values, identifying a data transformation tool that is relevant to the set of example values;

generating a transformation program that uses the data transformation tool and a supplemental transformation tool to transform the one or more example input values to the desired form in which to transform data, wherein the supplemental transformation tool is utilized based on a determination that the data transformation function does not result in the desired form in which to transform data, and wherein the supplemental transformation tool is applied to an output value of the data transformation function; and

providing one or more transformed output values resulting from execution of the transformation program using at least a portion of the one or more example input values.

11. The method of claim 10 further comprising searching for the data transformation tool from a collection of data transformation tools.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein each of the data transformation tools comprises transformation functions.

13. The method of claim 10, wherein the data transformation tool is identified as relevant to the set of example values based on a syntactic distance between at least one of the example values and a calling example pattern associated with the data transformation tool.

14. The method of claim 10 further comprising providing a suggestion of the transformation program to a user device.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the one or more transformed output values are provided based on a selection of the suggested transformation program.

16. One or more computer storage media having computer-executable instructions embodied thereon that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform a method for facilitating data transformations, the method comprising:

receiving a set of example values including one or more example input values that indicate data values to be transformed and one or more example output values that indicate a desired form in which to transform data;

analyzing the set of example values to identify a data transformation function that is relevant to the transformation of the set of example values;

executing the data transformation function using an example input value to obtain an output value from the data transformation function;

based on determining by a comparison of the output value resulting from execution of the data transformation function to one of the example output values that the data transformation function does not result in the desired data transformation, identifying a transformation tool to apply to the output value from the data transformation function that obtains the desired form in which to transform data; and

generating a transformation program using the data transformation function and the transformation tool, the transformation program being usable to transform the at least a portion of the one or more example input values to the desired form in which to transform data.

17. The media of claim 16 further comprising providing a suggestion of the transformation program, wherein selection of the transformation program results in a data transformation.

18. The media of claim 16 further comprising providing one or more transformed output values generated from execution of the transformation program.

19. The media of claim 16, wherein the transformation tool comprises a second data transformation function, a transformation table, or a transformation service.

20. The media of claim 16, wherein the transformation tool comprises a transformation operator that performs a syntactic transformation comprising one or more of a concatenation operation, a split operation, and a numeric operation.