DATA-DRIVEN VISUALIZATION OF PSEUDO-INFINITE SCENES

• US 20100325196A1
• Filed: 06/19/2009
• Published: 12/23/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 06/19/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Rubin, Darryl E., Beckman, Brian C., Katzenberger, G. Shon, Mital, Vijay
• Granted Patent: US 8,788,574 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/203
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24568 Data stream processing; Continuous queries

Abstract

The use of a data stream object to enumerate elements of a data stream to thereby drive rendering of a data-driven model. The data driven model includes multiple view components that may use their own construction logic to render visual items based on data provided to their input parameter(s). The data stream may be quite large, in which case, only a portion of the data stream is enumerated by the data stream object. The enumerated elements of the data stream may be used to populate the input parameters of the view components, and or may be provided to analytics, from which input parameters of the view components may be derived. Thus, a data stream, regardless of its size, may be dealt with in the consistent manner to thereby drive the data-driven model.

Claims

1. A physical computer program product comprising one or more physical computer-readable media having thereon computer-executable instructions that are structured such that, when executed by one or more processors of a computing system, the computing system is caused to instantiate in memory the following:

a data stream object associated with a data stream, wherein the data stream itself is not entirely within the memory of the computing system although the data stream object is within the memory of the computing system,

wherein the data stream object is configured to respond to requests for a portion of the data stream object by performing;

an act of identifying the portion of the data stream requested;

an act of accessing at least the identified portion of the data stream, but not the whole data stream;

an act of providing the identified portion of the data stream;

wherein the identified portion of the data stream is used in a data-driven model in which one or more view components use the data from the data stream to render visual items on a display.

2. The computer program product in accordance with claim 1, wherein at least a portion of the identified portion of the data stream is provided directly to one or more view components to thereby directly impact rendering of the visual items.

3. The computer program product in accordance with claim 1, wherein at least a portion of the identified portion of the data stream is provided to influence analytics, wherein it is the analytics that provides data to the view components to thereby impact the rendering of the visual items.

4. The computer program product in accordance with claim 1, wherein the data stream is a data stream that is too large to fit within the memory of the computing system.

5. The computer program product in accordance with claim 4, wherein the data stream is infinite.

6. The computer program product in accordance with claim 4, wherein the data stream is finite.

7. The computer program product in accordance with claim 1, wherein the data stream is finite, but larger than half of the memory of the computing system.

8. The computer program product in accordance with claim 1, wherein the data stream object enumerates the data stream beginning at the beginning member elements of the data stream.

9. The computer program product in accordance with claim 1, wherein the data stream object enumerates the data stream at middle member elements of the data stream without having to first enumerate the beginning member elements of the data stream.

10. The computer program product in accordance with claim 1, wherein the requested portion is identified implicitly in at least one of the requests by identifying characteristics of requested members of the data stream, rather than expressly identifying the requested members of the data stream.

11. The computer program product in accordance with claim 1, wherein the requested portion is identified expressly in at least one of the requests by expressly identifying the requested members of the data stream.

12. The computer program product in accordance with claim 1, wherein the data stream object may receive multiple requests for portions of the data stream from a single requesting entity.

13. A physical computer program product comprising one or more physical computer-readable media having thereon computer-executable instructions that are structured such that, when executed by one or more processors of a computing system, the computing system is caused to perform a method for rendering a visual item, the method comprising:

an act of determining that a portion of a data series comprising a plurality of members of the data series is to be provided to one or more view components, wherein each of the one or more view components includes rendering logic that is executed using at least one of the plurality of members of the data series;

an act of requesting the portion of the data series from a data stream object;

an act of receiving the plurality of members of the data series corresponding to the requested portion of the data series from the data stream object in response to the request; and

an act of providing the received plurality of members of the data series to the one or more view components.

14. The computer program product in accordance with claim 13, wherein the act of requesting the portion of the data stream is done by identifying characteristics of the members of the data stream belonging to that portion, rather than expressly identifying the members of the data stream within the requested portion of the data stream.

15. The computer program product in accordance with claim 13, wherein the act of requesting the portion of the data stream is done by expressly identifying the members of the data stream within the requested portion of the data stream.

16. The computer program product in accordance with claim 13, wherein the data stream is an infinite data stream.

17. The computer program product in accordance with claim 13, wherein the data stream is a pseudo-infinite data stream.

18. The computer program product in accordance with claim 13, wherein the data stream is a partially pseudo-infinite data stream.

19. A computing system that is structured to include the following:

an analytics portion configured to represent a model, the analytics portion configured to receive data, apply or bind the received data to model parameter(s) of the model, identify input model parameter(s) and output model parameter(s) based on the application or binding of the received data, and solve for the output model parameters;

a view portion configured to apply a plurality of the model parameters of the model as input parameters to view components, each of the view components containing construction logic that uses at least one of the input parameters to render a corresponding visual item,

wherein at least some of the data received by the analytics portion or some of the input parameters of the view components are populated by using a data stream object that enumerates elements of a data stream that is too large to fit within a memory of the computing system.

20. The computing system in accordance with claim 19, wherein the computing system is distributed.