Creating multiple and cascading business interpretations from raw application data using transformation layering

• US 20040078760A1
• Filed: 08/28/2003
• Published: 04/22/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 10/21/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: LinkedIn Corporation (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Melhem, Wassim, Knight, Christine N.
• Granted Patent: US 7,853,938 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/522
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/143 Markup, e.g. Standard Generalized Markup Language [SGML] or Document Type Definition [DTD]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/154 Tree transformation for tree-structured or markup documents, e.g. XSLT, XSL-FO or stylesheets

Abstract

An XSLT-based transformation process addresses the performance problems of ordinary XSLT transformations and provides for an efficient conversion of many sources of raw, or interpreted, application data into many different interpretations. In addition, the data may be filtered to downstream users, thus enabling the use of security measures by way of the filters.

Claims

1. A computer readable medium containing computer-executable instructions which, when performed by a processor in a computer system, cause the computer system to:

process at least one original document of raw application data with a cascade of reusable platform-independent software components;

each component of said cascade that receives an input from another component of said cascade, receives an input document from said another component and applies a stylesheet to at least said input document to produce an output document.

2. The computer readable medium of claim 1 wherein said stylesheet comprises an eXtensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) stylesheet.

3. The computer readable medium of claim 1 wherein said reusable platform-independent software components are JavaBeans.

4. The computer readable medium of claim 3 wherein at least one of said JavaBeans is an Enterprise JavaBean.

5. The computer readable medium of claim 4 wherein said Enterprise JavaBean implements security measures, where said security measures specify, based on a role of a user, an amount of said output document to which said user may be exposed.

6. The computer readable medium of claim 2 wherein said XSL stylesheet is an XSL Transformations (XSLT) stylesheet.

7. The computer readable medium of claim 6 wherein at least one component, of said components, that outputs to another of said components, uses said XSLT stylesheet to filter said input document so that said output document to another of said components is of a reduced size.

8. The computer readable medium of claim 2 wherein at least one component, of said components, that outputs to another of said components also receives a secondary original document as input and uses said XSL stylesheet to filter said secondary original document along with said input document to augment said output document.

9. The computer readable medium of claim 1 wherein said computer readable instructions are organized as bifurcated cascades of reusable platform-independent software components such that common processing for any two leaf node components of said cascade is accomplished upstream of a bifurcation between said two leaf node components.

10. The computer readable medium of claim 9 wherein each leaf node component outputs a document comprising data based on a portion of data from said at least one original document.

11. The computer readable medium of claim 1 wherein at least one component, of said components, can serialize said output document.

12. The computer readable medium of claim 1 wherein at least one component, of said components, uses an aggregator to compile results from different transformations.

13. The computer readable medium of claim 1 wherein at least one component, of said components, uses an interpreter to give context and meaning to said output document.

14. A computer system for data interpretation comprising:

a processor operable to perform computer-executable instructions to process at least one original document of raw application data with a cascade of reusable platform-independent software components;

each component of said cascade that receives an input from another component of said cascade, receives an input document from said another component and applies an eXtensible Stylesheet Language stylesheet to at least said input document to produce an output document.

15. The computer system of claim 14 wherein said reusable platform-independent software components are JavaBeans.

16. The computer system of claim 14 wherein said stylesheet comprises an eXtensible Stylesheet Language stylesheet.

17. The computer system of claim 15 wherein at least one said document received as input is formatted in the extensible Markup Language.

18. A method for processing at least one original document of raw application data, comprising:

processing at least one original document of raw application data with a cascade of reusable platform-independent software components,

each component of said cascade that receives an input from another component of said cascade, receives an input document from said another component and applies a stylesheet to at least said input document to produce an output document.

19. The method of claim 18 wherein said stylesheet comprises an eXtensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) stylesheet.

20. The method of claim 18 wherein said cascade of reusable platform-independent software components is a cascade of JavaBeans.

21. A computer readable medium containing computer-executable instructions which, when performed by a processor in a computer system for data interpretation, cause the computer system to create interpretations of at least one original document of raw application data, where said computer-executable instructions are organized as a cascade of reusable platform-independent software components where each component in said cascade causes the processor to receive a document as input, apply a stylesheet to said document and produce an output document.

22. The computer readable medium of claim 21 wherein said stylesheet comprises an XSL stylesheet.

23. The computer readable medium of claim 22 wherein at least one said document received as input is formatted in the eXtensible Markup Language.

24. A computer system for data interpretation comprising:

a processor operable to perform computer-executable instructions to create interpretations of an original document of raw application data, where said computer-executable instructions are organized as a cascade of reusable platform-independent software components, where each component in said cascade cause said processor to receive a document as input, apply an eXtensible Stylesheet Language stylesheet to said document and produce an output document.

25. A method of creating an interpretation of an original document of raw application data comprising:

at an instance of a first reusable platform-independent software component in a plurality of reusable platform-independent software components arranged in a cascade;

receiving said original document;

applying an eXtensible Stylesheet Language stylesheet to said original document; and

producing an output document;

at an instance of a subsequent reusable platform-independent software component in said cascade;

receiving an interim document output from a previous reusable platform-independent software component as input;

applying an eXtensible Stylesheet Language stylesheet to said interim document; and

producing a further output document;

at an instance of a last reusable platform-independent software component in said cascade;

receiving a final interim document output from a penultimate reusable platform-independent software component as input;

applying an eXtensible Stylesheet Language stylesheet to said final interim document; and

producing said interpretation.

26. The method of claim 25 further comprising, at an instance of said subsequent reusable platform-independent software component, receiving further input and utilizing said further input to augment said further output document.

27. The method of claim 26, wherein said further input is received from a database.

28. The method of claim 25, wherein said interpretation is a first interpretation, further comprising, at an instance of another reusable platform-independent software component in said cascade:

receiving said final interim document output from said penultimate reusable platform-independent software component as input;

applying an eXtensible Stylesheet Language stylesheet to said final interim document; and

producing a second interpretation.

29. The method of claim 25 wherein at least one of said original document, said interim document and said final interim document is formatted in the extensible Markup Language.