EXPRESSIVE GROUPING FOR LANGUAGE INTEGRATED QUERIES

• US 20090271382A1
• Filed: 04/23/2008
• Published: 10/29/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 04/23/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Vick, Paul A., Meijer, Henricus Johannes Maria
• Granted Patent: US 8,713,015 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2433 Query languages
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/244 Grouping and aggregation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/245 Query processing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2452 Query translation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24556 Aggregation; Duplicate elimination
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3331 Query processing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3332 Query translation

Abstract

Standard group operators afford expressive grouping across collections of various types for employment by a number of programming languages. The operators can leverage positional information to facilitate grouping of sequential/ordered input data. Groups can also include more than one input element. Additionally or alternatively, the operators can enable multi-level grouping such as nested or hierarchical grouping. In accordance with one aspect, the group operators can be employed in conjunction with language-integrated queries.

Claims

1. A computer system, comprising:

an application component that affords computer executable functionality; and

a group component to facilitate execution of at least one of a positional, multi-member, or multi-level group operator specified by the application component.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising an injection component that injects a designated group operator into an application representation.

3. The system of claim 2, the application component includes a query comprehension syntax and the injection component injects the group operator related to the query comprehension syntax into the application representation.

4. The system of claim 1, the group operator is executable across different data sources.

5. The system of claim 1, the group operator is executable across an ordered set of data.

6. The system of claim 1, the group operator divides elements into groups upon identification of an element that satisfies a predicate.

7. The system of claim 1, the group operator divides elements into groups and terminates groups upon identification of an element that satisfies a predicate.

8. The system of claim 1, the group operator creates a new group upon determination that a next element is of a different value than a previous element.

9. The system of claim 1, the group component facilitates execution of the positional, multi-member, and multi-level group operators.

10. The system of claim 1, the group operator comprising an accumulator component that accumulates intermediate results and outputs a final result to avoid generation of groups from in-memory representations thereof.

11. A data interaction method, comprising:

identifying a reference to a query group operator; and

inserting the group operator into a referencing computer program to enable grouping of ordered data as part of a data query operation.

12. The method of claim 11, comprising identifying a query comprehension including the group operator.

13. The method of claim 11, further comprising executing the group operator.

14. The method of claim 13, comprising grouping input data as a function position.

15. The method of claim 13, comprising injecting input elements into more than one group.

16. The method of claim 13, comprising constructing nested groupings.

17. The method of claim 13, comprising passing intermediate results to an accumulation function in memory to provide a desired result and avoid group construction

18. A data interaction system, comprising:

means for grouping sequences of data independent of a programming language; and

means for injecting the grouping means into a computer program to facilitate sequence-based grouping in conjunction with a language-integrated query.

19. The system of claim 18, the means for grouping adds sequence elements to more than one group.

20. The system of claim 18, the means for grouping performs hierarchical grouping.