Managing code when communicating using heirarchically-structured data

• US 20060107251A1
• Filed: 12/02/2005
• Published: 05/18/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 06/28/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Shah, Ashish B., Shah, Darshatkumar, Boshier, Alan Geoffrey
• Granted Patent: US 7,707,545 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/108
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/71 Version control security arrangements therefor G06F21/57; Configuration management

Abstract

A description of the hierarchically-structured document is accessed and converted into an early-bound object having at least some of the same properties as the hierarchically-structured document, and having at least some of the methods that may be performed on the hierarchically-structured document. When a function call is placed to the early-bound object, the early-bound object causes the appropriate corresponding changes to be affected on the hierarchically-structured document while maintaining change tracking information for the document. This reduces the difficulty when drafting source code for a program that interfaces with hierarchically-structured documents that can have varying structures and may be governed by complex change tracking rules.

Claims

1. A computing system that has access to a service that maintains hierarchically-structured documents of at least one particular class, comprising:

a processor; and

one or more computer-readable media having computer-executable instructions, that when executed, implement a method for facilitating the programming of source code wherein the programmer is relieved of having to track the document-specific schema of the hierarchically-structured documents that may be called and operated upon by the computer system when running the compiled source code by permitting the computer system'"'"'s processor to issue a function call that will interface with an early-bound object, thereby permitting the early-bound object to adjust change tracking information that will result in altering one of the hierarchically-structured documents of a particular class rather than having to access the specific schema of the hierarchical document itself to do so,

wherein the method comprises;

accessing a description of the schema of one or more hierarchically-structured documents of a particular class, the particular class of hierarchically-structured documents having properties and methods that may be performed on the hierarchically-structured documents of the particular class, wherein at least one of the properties includes change tracking information;

converting the accessed description of the schema into at least one corresponding early-bound object that has data fields for storing at least some of the properties as well as at least some of the methods that correspond to the hierarchically-structured documents of the particular class, wherein the early-bound object comprises the change tracking information;

detecting a property modification by receiving a request to interface with the early-bound object in order to modify at least one property of the at least one early-bound object as a result of a function call from the microprocessor running the compiled program, the function call interfacing with the at least one early-bound object rather than with the particular document description of the schema for the one or more hierarchical documents of the particular class;

an act of causing the at least one early-bound object that received the modification request to adjust the change tracking information of the at least one early-bound object in response to the requested modification; and

causing the at least one early-bound object to then either directly or indirectly automatically manipulate a corresponding hierarchically-structured document of the particular class to reflect the property modification.

2. A computing system in accordance with claim 1, wherein the corresponding hierarchically-structured document of the particular class comprises an eXtenstible Markup Language (XML) document.

3. A computing system in accordance with claim 1, wherein the description of the schema of hierarchically-structured documents of a particular class includes an identification of atomically-editable portions of hierarchically-structured documents of the particular class.

4. A computing system in accordance with claim 3, wherein the act of converting the description of the schema into at least one early-bound object comprises an act of preserving the identification of atomically-editable portions of hierarchically-structured documents of the particular class in the early-bound object.