Direct deployment of a software application from code written in tables

• US 20050066306A1
• Filed: 06/17/2004
• Published: 03/24/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 09/24/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Callahan Cellular LLC (Intellectual Ventures LLC)
• Original Assignee: Tablecode Software Corporation
• Inventors: Diab, Salleh
• Granted Patent: US 7,318,216 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/108
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/24 Object-oriented
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/34 Graphical or visual programming
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99943 Generating database or data structure, e.g. via user interface
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99944 Object-oriented database structure

Abstract

The invention relates to a method for developing a software application including the step of creating a software application having one or more classes, each class comprising one or more metadata describing characteristics defining the class. The method also includes the step of enabling any number of additional metadata to be added to the metadata of the class to facilitate the development of the software application. Also, the metadata and the additional metadata are organized in a tabular fashion.

Claims

1. ) A software application development environment facilitating development of a software application, the software application development environment comprising:

a) a software application comprising a plurality of classes, each class comprising a plurality of metadata stored in a tabular fashion and describing characteristics defining each class;

b) a virtual program deploying the software application; and

c) an editor developing at least a portion of the software application from at least a portion of the plurality of metadata after the deployment of the software application.

2. ) The software application development environment of claim 1 wherein each class in the plurality of classes further comprises:

a) a class-head comprising a plurality of class-head metadata in the plurality of the metadata, the class-head metadata describing characteristics defining the class-head; and

b) a class-body comprising a plurality of class-body members, each member comprising a plurality of class-body members'"'"' metadata in the plurality of the metadata, the class-body member metadata describing characteristics defining the class-body members.

3. ) The software application development environment of claim 1 wherein the at least a portion of the software application developed from the editor further comprises at least one of a help system, a user interface, an icon, and a menu system.

4. ) The software application development environment of claim 3 further comprising a message saved as metadata in the plurality of metadata for developing the at least a portion of the software application.

5. ) The software application development environment of claim 3 wherein the at least a portion of the software application further comprises a menu system, the menu system comprising a list of the plurality of classes for the software application, a list of class-body members for each class in the plurality of classes, and a list of functions associated with the class-body members for each class in the plurality of classes.

6. ) A method for deploying a software application, the method comprising:

a) developing source code of the software application from a class comprising a plurality of metadata stored in a tabular fashion and describing characteristics of the class; and

b) deploying the software application directly from the source code.

7. ) The method of claim 6 wherein the deploying of the software application directly from the source code further comprises creating a running executable program directly from the source code.

8. ) The method of claim 6 wherein the deploying of the software application directly from the source code further comprises dynamically creating a menu system for the software application.

9. ) The method of claim 6 further comprising selecting the software application from a software catalog table comprising a plurality of software applications.

10. ) The method of claim 9 further comprising selecting a class belonging to the selected software application from an application table comprising a plurality of classes.

11. ) The method of claim 9 wherein the deploying of the software application further comprises run-time compiling of the member functions to bytecodes and saving the bytecodes for the software application in memory.

12. ) The method of claim 10 further comprising:

a) selecting a data member belonging to the selected class from the class table comprising a plurality of class members to edit its value; and

b) selecting a member function belonging to the selected class from the class table comprising a plurality of class members to execute the selected function.

13. ) The method of claim 6 wherein a domain expert develops the source code.

14. ) The method of claim 6 wherein a domain expert develops the software application after deployment.

15. ) A software application development environment facilitating development of a software application, the software application development environment comprising:

a) means for describing characteristics defining a class in a tabular format; and

b) means for facilitating the development of the software application by enabling additional descriptions of the characteristics defining the class to be added to the means for describing the characteristics defining the class.

16. ) A software application development environment facilitating development of a software application, the software application development environment comprising:

a) means for developing a software application by describing characteristics defining a class in a tabular format;

b) means for deploying the software application; and

c) means for further developing, after deployment, at least a portion of the software application by building upon the descriptions of the characteristics defining the class.

17. ) A method of executing computer instructions comprising:

a) defining a software application comprising a plurality of classes in a database table, the plurality of classes comprising a plurality of class-heads and a plurality of class-body members;

b) storing metadata information about the application;

c) storing metadata information about the plurality of class-body members; and

d) storing source code associated with the plurality of class-body member functions in a plurality of files.

18. ) The method of claim 17 further comprising enabling a user to select an application to deploy.

19. ) The method of claim 17 further comprising enabling a user to create a new document.

20. ) The method of claim 17 further comprising enabling a user to open an existing document.

21. ) The method of claim 17 further comprising enabling a user to at least one of create and select a layout.

22. ) A computer program product built to work as a plug-in application to a main software program that has a programming environment runtime extension, said program product comprising a computer-readable medium having a sequence of instructions which, when executed by a processor, causes to execute a process for representing data in an object-oriented relational database, the process comprising:

a) allowing an end-user to select to create a new document or to open an existing document;

b) allowing the end-user to select space to work in;

c) allowing the end-user to select either to create a new layout or to select an existing layout;

d) allowing the end-user to select an application to deploy; and

e) reading metadata stored for the selected application and generating a plurality of object data structures stored in computer memory for each concrete class of the selected application, each of said data structures comprising metadata elements of a class-head of the selected application, and each of said data structures further comprising an array of data substructures comprising metadata elements for at least one member of a class-body of said selected application.