Dynamic contexts

• US 20050268277A1
• Filed: 06/01/2004
• Published: 12/01/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 06/01/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: SAP SE
• Original Assignee: SAP AG (SAP SE)
• Inventors: Cherdron, Markus, Weigel, Frank, Ritter, Stephan, Reeder, Uwe
• Granted Patent: US 7,581,204 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/104
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/38 for implementing user interfaces

Abstract

Methods, apparatus, and computer program products that implement techniques for extending the MVC design pattern by structuring data of an application into application contexts. The techniques feature accessing a predetermined structure for a storage area, modifying the predetermined structure and creating an instance of the storage area according to the predetermined structure. The storage area relates to a controller. The controller is operable to manipulate a model and a view. The view includes multiple UI elements for presenting data from the model. The predetermined structure includes multiple design-time context elements and relationships between the design time-context elements. At least one of the UI elements is bound to one of the design-time context elements. The instance of the storage area includes multiple run-time context elements. Each run-time context element corresponds to one of the design-time context elements.

Claims

1. A computer program product, tangibly embodied in an information carrier, the computer program product being operable to cause data processing apparatus to perform operations comprising:

accessing a predetermined structure for a storage area, the storage area relating to a controller, the controller being operable to manipulate a model and a view, the view including multiple UI elements for presenting data from the model, wherein the predetermined structure includes multiple design-time context elements and relationships between the design time-context elements, and further wherein at least one of the UI elements is bound to one of the design-time context elements;

modifying the predetermined structure; and

creating an instance of the storage area according to the predetermined structure, the instance of the storage area including multiple run-time context elements, each run-time context element corresponding to one of the design-time context elements.

2. The product of claim 1, wherein:

the design-time context elements comprise nodes and attributes;

the relationships organize the nodes and attributes in a hierarchical arrangement;

the run-time context elements comprise node collections;

modifying the predetermined structure comprises adding new nodes and attributes to the hierarchical arrangement; and

creating the instance of the storage area comprises generating new node collections corresponding to the new nodes and attributes.

3. The product of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise resetting the predetermined structure to an initial state.

4. The product of claim 1, wherein modifying the predetermined structure comprises mapping one of the design-time context elements to a second design-time context element in a second, distinct predetermined structure for second, distinct storage area.

5. The product of claim 1, wherein:

the model comprises multiple model objects of multiple different types; and

at least one of the design-time context elements references one of the model objects and has an associated method operable to access the attributes of the referenced model object.

6. The product of claim 5, wherein at design time, the type of the referenced model object is declared to be generic, and at run time, the type of the referenced model object is updated to reflect a specific type, the specific type being any one of the multiple different types.

7. A computer program product, tangibly embodied in an information carrier, the computer program product being operable to cause data processing apparatus to perform operations comprising:

executing an application, the application including;

at least one view, the view comprising multiple user interface (UI) elements for presenting data from a model, the model comprising multiple model objects;

at least one controller for manipulating the model and the view;

at least one storage area corresponding to the controller, the storage area including a context tree, the context tree being structured according to a metadata tree and referencing one or more of the model objects; and

one or more bindings linking the UI elements in the view and the context tree; and

during execution of the application;

modifying the metadata tree; and

modifying the context tree according to the modified metadata tree.

8. The product of claim 7, wherein:

the metadata tree includes nodes; and

modifying the metadata tree includes adding a node to the metadata tree or deleting a node from the metadata tree.

9. The product of claim 8, wherein:

the context tree includes node collections; and

modifying the context tree includes adding a node collection to the context tree or deleting a node collection from the context tree.

10. The product of claim 7, wherein:

the metadata tree includes attributes that represent application data; and

modifying the metadata tree includes adding an attribute to the metadata tree or deleting an attribute from the metadata tree.

11. The product of claim 7, wherein:

the metadata tree includes attributes that represent application data, the application data having a data type, each attribute having a data type corresponding to the data type of the application data being represented; and

modifying the metadata tree includes changing the data type of one of the attributes in the metadata tree.

12. The product of claim 7, wherein the operations further comprise:

after modifying the metadata tree, resetting the metadata tree by removing any modifications made to the metadata tree during execution of the application.

13. The product of claim 7, wherein the operations further comprise:

after resetting the metadata tree, deleting one or more portions of the context tree, the portions of the context tree corresponding to the removed modifications in the metadata tree.

14. The product of claim 7, wherein the application includes a second storage area having a second context tree, the second storage area including a second context tree structured according to a second metadata tree, and wherein the operations further comprise:

during execution of the application, mapping a portion of the first metadata tree to a portion of the second metadata tree.

15. The product of claim 14, wherein the portions of the first and second metadata trees comprise one or more of nodes and attributes.

16. The product of claim 7, wherein:

each of the model objects has a model object type and includes one or more attributes;

the metadata tree includes one or more model nodes, each model node including a reference to one of the model objects; and

the metadata tree further includes one or more generic model nodes, each generic model node being a model node that includes methods operable to access the attributes of model objects having distinct model object types.

17. The product of claim 16, wherein the methods include a getter method for retrieving a value of an attribute of a referenced model object and a setter method for setting the value of the attribute of the referenced model object.

18. Apparatus comprising:

means for accessing a predetermined structure for a storage area, the storage area relating to a controller, the controller being operable to manipulate a model and a view, the view including multiple UI elements for presenting data from the model, wherein the predetermined structure includes multiple design-time context elements and relationships between the design time-context elements, and further wherein at least one of the UI elements is bound to one of the design-time context elements;

means for modifying the predetermined structure; and

means for creating an instance of the storage area according to the predetermined structure, the instance of the storage area including multiple run-time context elements, each run-time context element corresponding to one of the design-time context elements.

19. A method comprising:

accessing a predetermined structure for a storage area, the storage area relating to a controller, the controller being operable to manipulate a model and a view, the view including multiple UI elements for presenting data from the model, wherein the predetermined structure includes multiple design-time context elements and relationships between the design time-context elements, and further wherein at least one of the UI elements is bound to one of the design-time context elements;

modifying the predetermined structure; and

creating an instance of the storage area according to the predetermined structure, the instance of the storage area including multiple run-time context elements, each run-time context element corresponding to one of the design-time context elements.