Data-driven actions for network forms

• US 20060230338A1
• Filed: 03/30/2005
• Published: 10/12/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 03/30/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Kelkar, Amol S., Rivers-Moore, Jonathan E., Velzen, Danny van, Aggarwal, Ranjan, Airapetyan, David
• Granted Patent: US 7,673,228 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/205
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/174 Form filling; Merging
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]

Abstract

Systems and/or methods are described that enable a data-driven action associated with altering a data instance of a network form without altering and/or having access to the data instance. These systems and/or methods, in one embodiment, render a result of a data-driven action for a network form without transforming the network form'"'"'s data instance. In another embodiment, the systems and/or methods map a data-driven action to a view-centric logical representation of the electronic form.

Claims

1. One or more computer-readable media having computer-readable instructions therein that, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform acts comprising:

receiving data through an editable view of a network form, the data capable of driving an action associated with a data instance of the network form if the data alters the data instance; and

performing the action without altering the data instance.

2. The media of claim 1, further comprising determining which node of a view-centric logical representation of the network form the data is associated with, and wherein the act of performing the action comprises performing the action associated with the node.

3. The media of claim 1, wherein the act of performing the action is performed without accessing the data instance following the act of receiving the data.

4. The media of claim 1, further comprising determining that the data is capable of driving the action.

5. The media of claim 1, further comprising determining if a result of the action is capable of driving another action associated with the data instance if the result alters the data instance and, if the result of the action is capable of driving another action, performing the other action without altering the data instance.

6. The media of claim 1, further comprising rendering a result of the act of performing the action without transforming the data instance.

7. The media of claim 1, further comprising updating locally stored data for the network form with a result of the act of performing the action.

8. The media of claim 1, further comprising determining if a result of performing the action is capable of altering the editable view.

9. The media of claim 1, wherein the action comprises a validation operation.

10. One or more computer-readable media having computer-readable instructions therein that, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform acts comprising:

receiving a result of a data-driven action for a network form; and

rendering the result of the data-driven action in an editable view of the network form without altering the network form'"'"'s data instance.

11. The media of claim 10, further comprising performing the data-driven action without altering the network form'"'"'s data instance.

12. The media of claim 10, wherein the act of rendering is performed without accessing the network form'"'"'s data instance.

13. The media of claim 10, wherein the acts of receiving and rendering are performed without a roundtrip to a network computer having the network form'"'"'s data instance.

14. The media of claim 10, wherein the act of rendering the result comprises re-rendering a portion of the editable view associated with a node having the result.

15. The media of claim 10, further comprising marking a node of a view-centric logical representation of the network form that is associated with the result and wherein the act of rendering the result comprises re-rendering the node.

16. One or more computer-readable media having computer-readable instructions therein that, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform acts comprising:

receiving a first relation for a data-driven action that maps the data-driven action to an electronic form'"'"'s data instance; and

building, based on the first relation, a second relation that maps the data-driven action to a view-centric logical representation of the electronic form.

17. The media of claim 16, further comprising replacing the first relation with the second relation.

18. The media of claim 16, wherein the first relation comprises an extensible Markup Language (XML) path language (XPath) mapping the data-driven action to a node of the electronic form'"'"'s data instance.

19. The media of claim 16, further comprising annotating the view-centric logical representation of the electronic form with the data-driven action based on the second relation.

20. The media of claim 16, further comprising extracting the first relation from the data-driven action.