System and method for automatic generation of software programs

• US 20030200531A1
• Filed: 02/03/2003
• Published: 10/23/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 02/01/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: John Fairweather
• Original Assignee: John Fairweather
• Inventors: Fairweather, John
• Granted Patent: US 7,240,330 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/114
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/427 Parsing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4493 Object persistence
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 13/0825 the ejection arrangement being of the push-push kind
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/913 Multimedia
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/966 Distributed
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99931 Database or file accessing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99942 Manipulating data structure, e.g. compression, compaction, compilation

Abstract

A system and environment in which the data within the system can be defined and manipulated in terms of a world model or Ontology, and for which the DBA and GUI portions of the programming tasks can be specified and automatically generated from this Ontology is provided. The invention includes the following components: extensions to a programming language that describe and abstract the logic associated with interacting with external ‘persistent’ storage; extensions to a programming language to handle type inheritance; extensions to the programming language to allow specification of the GUI content and layout; extensions to the programming language to allow specification and inheritance of scriptable actions; a means whereby the data described in the programming language can be translated automatically into generating the corresponding tables and fields in external databases and the queries and actions necessary to access those databases and read/write to them; a high level ontology designed to facilitate operation of the particular application being developed; and a means to tie types and their access into a suite of federated type or container/engine specific servers responsible for the actual persistence of the data. Other improvements and extensions are also claimed.

Claims

1. ) A system for rapid generation of software applications from a describing ontology as expressed in an ontology definition language (ODL) comprising the following:

a) a processor;

b) a types system capable of describing arbitrary binary structures;

c) a memory system for instantiating and manipulating arbitrary collections of typed data (and their interrelations) as obtained from external persistent storage.

d) an ontology description language (ODL), wherein such ODL is based on a computer programming language (the ‘

base’

language);

e) a collections system wherein a plurality of data containers can be registered with the system via a plug-in registry,

f) a databse creation engine wherein such engine is capable of using the specifications given in the ODL to automatically generate any storage tables necessary in the containers that have been registered with the collections system;

g) a UI creation engine, wherein such engine is capable of using the ODL to automatically generate a user interface that permits display, interaction, and querying of all data residing in storage.

2. ) The system of claim 1, wherein the types system is the types system described in the Types Patent.

3. ) The system of claim 1, wherein the memory system is the data collections system described in the Collections Patent.

4. ) The system of claim 1, wherein the memory system is capable of using information in the ODL to unify one or more arbitrary collection(s) of data into one or more federated data containers (a “

federation”

) such that each federation is associated with one or more types of fields in a given object.

5. ) The system of claim 1, wherein the base language used to create the ODL is the C programming language.

6. ) The system of claim 5, wherein the ODL includes a symbol and syntax for expressing a singular reference (a persistent reference) from a field of a type to an object in persistent storage.

7. ) The system of claim 5, wherein the ODL includes a symbol and syntax for expressing a reference (a collection reference) from a field of a type to a collection of data held in persistent storage.

8. ) The system of claim 5, wherein the ODL includes a symbol and syntax for expressing the ‘

echo’

field for any given reference to external storage wherein such echo field can be used to automate data retrieval.

9. ) The system of claim 5, wherein the ODL includes the ability to specify and manipulate named, executable scripts and annotations on a per-type and per-field basis through the ODL.

10. ) The system of claim 6, wherein the C* programming language utilizes ‘

#’

to identify a persistent reference.

11. ) The system of claim 7, wherein the C* programming language utilizes ‘

@@”

to identify a collection reference,

12. ) The system of claim 8, wherein the C* programming language utilizes ‘

>

<

’

to specify an echo field.

13. ) The system of claim 4, wherein at least one of the federated data containers is a relational database.

14. ) The system of claim 4, wherein at least one of the federated data containers is an inverted text file query engine.

20. ) The system of claim 1, wherein the ODL is built to organize data relating to world events.

21. ) The system of claim 20, wherein the uppermost layer of the ODL includes one or more of the following:

Actor, Action, Stage, Event, Observation, and Source.

15. ) The system of 4, further comprising a query system for constructing and issuing data requests to one or more federated data containers.

16. ) The system of claim 15, wherein the query system is capable of assembling the data resulting from one or more data requests.

17. ) The system of claim 16, wherein the query system is logically seperated into two distinct layers such that each layer independantly handles different aspects of the issued data request and result assembling process performed by the query system. cm 18) The system of claim 17, wherein one layer of the query system is a lower layer, which handles container specific aspects of a query.

19. ) The system of claim 17, wherein one layer of the query system is an upper layer, which handles cross-container queries and assemblly of the data resulting from such cross-container queries via logical operations such as AND, OR, and NOT.