INTERFACING AN APPLICATION TO DATA SOURCES VIA A WEB SERVICE INTERFACE

• US 20090307190A1
• Filed: 06/06/2008
• Published: 12/10/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 06/06/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Maresca, Louis
• Granted Patent: US 8,782,065 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/245 Query processing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/33 Querying
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/143 Markup, e.g. Standard Generalized Markup Language [SGML] or Document Type Definition [DTD]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/543 User-generated data transfer, e.g. clipboards, dynamic data exchange [DDE], object linking and embedding [OLE]

Abstract

A system supports discovering available web services, retrieving description documents describing the web services, and binding methods and their parameters to data of an application document. When a user wants to bind a discovered web service to an application document, the system retrieves a description document from the web service. The system then parses the description document to identify the methods supported by the web service along with their parameters. The system allows a user to map method names and parameter names to more user-friendly display names. The system allows the user to bind the parameters to data of an application document. When the document is to be updated, the system sends a request for services specifying a method and input parameters as indicated by the binding. When a response is received, the system stores output parameters of the response in the document as indicating by the binding.

Claims

1. A method in a computing device for adding data sources for an application, the method comprising:

identifying web services that are available, the web services providing access to data sources;

receiving from a user of the application a selection of an available web service;

sending to the selected web service a request for a definition document describing services provided by the selected web service, the definition document describing methods and parameters of the methods to be used when requesting a service;

upon receiving the definition document, parsing the definition document to identify the methods and parameters of the methods;

receiving from a user a mapping of original names of methods and parameters as specified in the definition document to display names for use in displaying to a user;

receiving a selection of methods of the definition document and bindings of input and output parameters of the methods to data of the application;

sending a request to the selected web service that includes, for each selected method, input parameters retrieved from the data of the application as indicated by the bindings; and

receiving a response from the selected web service that includes, for each selected method, output parameters that are stored in the data of the application as indicated by the bindings.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the mappings of names and the bindings of the parameters of the selected methods are stored as a profile.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the profile is stored as part of a document that contains the data of the application.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein the document with the profile is sent to another computing device at which the profile can be used to update data of the document.

5. The method of claim 2 wherein the profile contains names and bindings for multiple web services.

6. The method of claim 2 wherein the user is provided an option of adding the profile to the document that contains the data.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the identifying of web services that are available includes accessing a universal description, discovery, and integration server.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the identifying of web services that are available includes receiving from the user an indication of an available web service.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the definition document complies with the web services description language standard.

10. The method of claim 9 wherein the parsing includes identifying an object model representing methods and a hierarchical representation of types of the parameters of the methods.

11. A computer-readable storage medium containing computer-executable instructions for controlling a computing device to add a web service as a data source to an application, by a method comprising:

identifying one or more web services that are available;

sending to an available web service a request for a web service description language (WSDL) document describing services provided by the selected web service;

after receiving a WSDL document from an available web service,

identifying from the WSDL document methods and their parameters that implement the services of the web service;

receiving a selection of methods and bindings of input and output parameters of the methods to data of the application; and

storing an indication of the available web service and the selection of methods and the bindings as a web service profile; and

updating data of the application based on the web service profile by

sending a request to the web service that includes, for selected methods, an input parameter retrieved from the data of the application as indicated by the bindings; and

receiving a response from the web service that includes, for selected methods, output parameters that are stored in the data of the application as indicated by the bindings.

12. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 11 wherein the profile is stored as part of a document that contains the data of the application.

13. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 12 wherein the document with the profile is sent to another computing device at which the profile can be used to update data of the document.

14. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 11 wherein the profile contains bindings for multiple web services.

15. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 11 wherein the user is provided an option of adding the profile to the document that contains the data.

16. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 11 wherein the identifying of web services that are available includes accessing a universal description, discovery, and integration server.

17. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 11 wherein the identifying of web services that are available includes receiving from the user an indication of the available web services.

18. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 11 including receiving from the user a mapping from names of the WSDL document to names to be displayed.

19. A computer-readable storage medium containing a data structure for a profile of a web service data source of an application, the data structure comprising:

an identification of a plurality of web services; and

for each web service,

a mapping of names of methods and parameters of the web service to display names for the methods and parameters; and

for each of a plurality of methods of the web service, a binding of an input parameter of the method to data of the application and a binding of an output parameter of the method to data of the application.

20. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 19, further including data of the application.