Method and apparatus for providing data from a data source to a data consumer, and for rendering data from a data provider to an interface

• US 20050210057A1
• Filed: 05/09/2005
• Published: 09/22/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 08/28/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Sprague, Roger W., Travison, Daniel T.
• Granted Patent: US 7,676,482 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/957 Browsing optimisation, e.g. caching or content distillation
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99942 Manipulating data structure, e.g. compression, compaction, compilation

Abstract

An apparatus and methodology are provided for obtaining data from a data source and providing the data to a data consumer, as well as for providing data from a data provider to an interface. The method provides for sending an origin request message to a data provider, receiving an origin response message having a presentation schema and data, and rendering the data to an interface by providing a presentation language representation of the data according to the presentation schema.

Claims

1. A method of obtaining data from a data source and rendering the data to an interface, comprising:

sending a first request message to a data provider;

receiving a first response message from the data provider, the first response message having a schema component and a data component, wherein the data component includes at least one data record having at least one data element and the schema component includes a name component, a display component, and a type component associated with the at least one data element in the at least one data record; and

rendering data from the data component to the interface according to the schema component.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the act of rendering data from the data component to the interface according to the schema component comprises providing a presentation language representation of the at least one data element of the at least one data record to the interface according to the schema component associated therewith.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the first request message includes an origin record identifier and a record count identifier.

4. The method of claim 3, the act of rendering further comprises providing a presentation language representation of the at least one data record having at least one data element to the interface including a binary display value and a binary type value and rendering the data based upon the binary display value and the binary type value.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the record count identifier comprises an integer representing a number of records desired from the data source;

wherein the data component comprises an integer number of data records having at least one data element, the integer number being equal to the record count identifier; and

wherein rendering data from the data component to the interface according to the schema component comprises providing a presentation language representation of the at least one data element of the integer number of data records to the interface according to the name component, display component and type component associated therewith.

6. The method of claim 2, wherein the presentation language representation is at least one of HTML, DHTML, postscript, java script, visual basic script, java, and visual C++.

8. The method of claim 2, wherein the display component has a binary display value and the type component has a binary type value.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the act of providing the presentation language representation comprises:

displaying the at least one data element of the at least one data record via the interface if the display value is one;

hiding the at least one data element of the at least one data record if the display value is zero;

displaying the at least one data element of the at least one data record as an image via the interface if the display value is one and the type value is one; and

displaying the at least one data element of the at least one data record as HTML via the interface if the display value is one and the type value is zero.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

sending a subsequent request message to the data provider, the subsequent request message having a record identifier and a record count identifier;

receiving a subsequent response message from the data provider, the subsequent response message having a data component; and

rendering data from the data component of the subsequent response message to the interface according to the schema component of the first response message.

11. A computer readable medium having stored thereon computer executable instructions for carrying out the method of claim 1.

12. A system for obtaining data from a data source and presenting the data to an interface comprising:

a data consumer in communication with the interface and adapted to send a first request message to a data provider, the first request message having an origin record identifier, and a record count identifier;

wherein the data provider is adapted to send a first response message to the data consumer, the first response message having a schema component and a data component including data from the data source; and

wherein the data consumer is further adapted to render the data to the interface according to the schema component.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the data consumer is provides a presentation language representation of the data to the interface according to the schema component.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the presentation language representation is at least one of HTML, DHTML, postscript, java script, visual basic script, java, and visual C++.

15. The system of claim 12, wherein the data consumer sends a subsequent request message having a record identifier and a record count identifier;

wherein the data provider sends a subsequent response message to the data consumer having a subsequent data component including data from the data source; and

wherein the data consumer renders data from the subsequent data component of the subsequent response message to the interface according to the schema component of the first response message.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the data consumer provides a presentation language representation of the data from the subsequent data component according to the schema component.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the presentation language representation of the data from the subsequent data component is one of HTML, DHTML, postscript, java script, visual basic script, java, and visual C++.

18. A computer readable medium having stored thereon computer executable instructions for carrying out the system of claim 12.

19. A data provider for providing data from a data source to a data consumer, comprising:

means for receiving a first request message from the data consumer, the first request message having an origin record identifier and a record count identifier;

means for constructing a first response message having a schema component and a data component according to the origin record identifier and the record count identifier, wherein the data component includes data from the data source, wherein the data component includes at least one data record having at least one data element and the schema component includes a name component, a title component, a width component, an alignment component, a display component, and a type component associated with the at least one data element in the at least one data record; and

means for sending the first response message to the data consumer.

20. The data provider of claim 19, further comprising:

means for rendering data from the data component to a interface according to the schema component comprising means for providing a presentation language representation of the at least one data record having at least one data element to the interface employing a binary display value and a binary type value and means for rendering the data based upon the binary display value and the binary type value.