ISOLATION OF USER-INTERACTIVE COMPONENTS

• US 20090193434A1
• Filed: 01/25/2008
• Published: 07/30/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 01/25/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Hill, David Paul, Gustafsson, Niklas, Rivard, John J
• Granted Patent: US 8,220,002 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 719/315
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/451 Execution arrangements for user interfaces

Abstract

The isolation of user-interactive components form the logical components of an exemplary computing application environment is provided. In an illustrative implementation, an exemplary computing application environment comprises one or more user interface (UI) elements that run on an exemplary user-interface processing thread and application logic that illustratively operatively runs asynchronously on at least one other processing thread. In an illustrative implementation an isolation boundary is provided between an exemplary user interface and the application logic of the exemplary computing application environment. In the illustrative implementation, the isolation boundary can comprise an asynchronous view contract comprising a channel between an exemplary view layer of an exemplary user interface (e.g., one or more user-interactive components) and application logic.

Claims

1. A system to facilitate communication between a user interface and a process, comprising:

a first thread associated with the user interface;

a second thread and/or memory space associated with the process for implementing requests received from the user interface; and

an isolation boundary operable to asynchronously offload and manage process requests and return calls to and from the second thread and/or memory space associated with the process.

2. The system as recited in claim 1, wherein the isolation boundary comprises a view contract.

3. The system as recited in claim 2, wherein the view contract cooperates with one or more request objects deployed by the user interface acting a view contract proxy with the user interface.

4. The system as recited in claim 3, wherein the view contract comprises a description of the data and operations that a user interface can request using the one or more request objects.

5. The system as recited in claim 3, wherein the view contract comprises a synchronization mechanism for the synchronization of data between both sides of the view contract, that synchronization mechanism comprises one or more portions of a computing application environment.

6. The system as recited in claim 3, wherein the view contract comprises a mechanism for the user interface to asynchronously invoke application logic of a computing application environment.

7. The system as recited in claim 3, wherein the view contract comprises a mechanism to send and correlate messages sent from the user interface, the messages being deployed according to a selected messaging architecture operable on a computing application environment.

8. The system as recited in claim 3, wherein the view contract comprises a mechanism for ensure by-value or immutable messages, the messages being deployed according to a selected messaging architecture operable on a computing application environment.

9. A user-interface architecture comprising:

a user interface thread to facilitate user interaction with a computing application environment by one or more user-interactive components;

at least one non-user interface thread cooperating with the user interface thread to process one or more features and/or operations of a computing application environment; and

an isolation boundary operable to receive requests for application logic processing by the one or more user-interactive components operating on the user interface thread and asynchronously deploying and monitoring the application logic processes for execution on the at least one non-user interface thread.

10. The architecture as recited in claim 9, wherein the isolation boundary comprises at least one request object and at least one view contract.

11. The architecture as recited in claim 10, wherein the request object encapsulates a single operation of the view contract.

12. The architecture as recited in claim 10, wherein the view contract comprises one or more messages and/or operations to facilitate the asynchronous processing of one or more computing application features/operations by one or more process executing n the at least one non-user interface thread.

13. The architecture as recited in claim 12, wherein the view contract comprises one request object for each message and/or operation on the view contract.

14. The architecture as recited in claim 10, wherein the request object is operable to perform one or more operations comprising invoking a single operation on the view contract, monitoring and tracking outstanding requests for application logic processing by the user interface.

15. A method for processing requests for application logic processing originating from user-interactive components in a multi-threaded architecture, the method comprising:

receiving at an isolation boundary a request from one or more user-interactive components executing on a user-interface thread, the request expressed through one or more request objects, and updating control data at the isolation boundary to facilitate asynchronous processing by one or more processes executing on a non-user-interface thread based on the request;

detecting in the non-user-interface thread a condition of the control data to generate application logic processing state data; and

providing the application logic processing state data to the one or more user-interactive component as expressed by one or more request objects.

16. The method as recited in claim 15, further comprising providing an isolation boundary comprising a view contract facilitating communications between the one or more user-interactive components executing on the user-interface thread and the one or more processes executing on the non-user-interface thread.

17. The method as recited in claim 16, further comprising synchronizing the data between both sides of a view contract.

18. The method as recited in claim 16, further comprising correlating messages by the view contract sent by the one or more user-interactive components.

19. The method as recited in claim 15 further comprising asynchronous invocation of one or more application logic processes by the one or more user-interactive components.

20. A computer-readable medium having computer executable instructions for performing the steps of a method for processing requests for application logic processing originating from user-interactive components in a multi-threaded architecture, the method comprising:

receiving at an isolation boundary a request from one or more user-interactive components executing on a user-interface thread, the request expressed through one or more request objects, and updating control data at the isolation boundary to facilitate asynchronous processing by one or more processes executing on a non-user-interface thread based on the request;

detecting in the non-user-interface thread a condition of the control data to generate application logic processing state data; and

providing the application logic processing state data to the one or more user-interactive component as expressed by one or more request objects.