SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR GENERATING A SET OF LINKED ROTATIONAL VIEWS OF MODEL OBJECTS

• US 20110055680A1
• Filed: 08/31/2009
• Published: 03/03/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 08/31/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Red Hat, Inc. (International Business Machines Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Red Hat, Inc. (International Business Machines Corporation)
• Inventors: Williamson, Eric
• Granted Patent: US 9,152,435 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/212
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/451 Execution arrangements for user interfaces

Abstract

Embodiments relate to systems and methods for generating a set of linked rotational views of a model object. A modeling client can host modeling logic and an application programming interface (API) to create, access, manipulate, and import/export modeling objects used in modeling applications, such as engineering, medical, financial, and other modeling platforms. The source data accepted into the modeling client can include consumer or business-level applications, whose spreadsheet, database or other content can be extracted and encapsulated in object-oriented format, such as extensible markup language (XML) format. A set of layers of the model objects can be associated via a set of linkages. A rotator widget or other interface object can be presented to allow a user to traverse the linkages and rapidly rotate through layers in a view, without having to switch tabs, planes, database dimensions, or manually operate other dimensional control, enhancing viewing efficiency of large layers.

Claims

1. A method of generating a selectively rotatable view of data, comprising:

accessing a set of source data;

generating a first view of a portion of the source data to present via a user interface;

presenting a user-activatable interface resource to select at least one additional view of the at least a portion of the source data linked via a set of layer linkages to the first view; and

initiating a view transition to the at least one additional view.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the set of source data comprises at least one of a spreadsheet and a database, and the first view and the at least one additional view each comprise a separately viewable layer of the source data.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the user-activatable interface resource comprises a view transition icon, and activation of the view transition icon initiates a rotational view transition to the at least one additional view.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the view transition icon is controllable via a cursor on the user interface.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein the at least one additional view comprises a plurality of additional views, and repeated activation of the view transition icon generates a return to the first view after display of a last view in the plurality of additional views.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the user-activatable interface resource comprises a speed transition control to control a speed of transition to the at least one additional view, an acceleration control to control an acceleration of the speed of transition to the at least one additional view, and a direction control to control a direction of view transition.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the user-activatable interface resource comprises a de-activation selection to de-activate the rotatable view of the data.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the user-activatable interface resource is embeddable in the source data.

9. A client system, comprising:

an interface to a set of source data; and

a processor, communicating with the set of source data via the interface, the processor being configured to

generate a first view of a portion of the source data to present via a user interface,

present a user-activatable interface resource to select at least one additional view of the at least a portion of the source data linked via a set of layer linkages to the first view, and

initiate a view transition to the at least one additional view.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the set of source data comprises at least one of a spreadsheet and a database, and the first view and the at least one additional view each comprise a separately viewable layer of the source data.

11. The system of claim 9, wherein the user-activatable interface resource comprises a view transition icon, and activation of the view transition icon initiates a rotational view transition to the at least one additional view.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the view transition icon is controllable via a cursor on the user interface.

13. The method of claim 11, wherein the at least one additional view comprises a plurality of additional views, and repeated activation of the view transition icon generates a return to the first view after display of a last view in the plurality of additional views.

14. The system of claim 9, wherein the user-activatable interface resource comprises a speed transition control to control a speed of transition to the at least one additional view, an acceleration control to control an acceleration of the speed of transition to the at least one additional view, and a direction control to control a direction of view transition.

15. The system of claim 9, wherein the user-activatable interface resource comprises a de-activation selection to de-activate the rotatable view of the data.

16. The system of claim 9, wherein the user-activatable interface resource is embeddable in the source data.

17. A computer readable storage medium, the computer readable storage medium storing a set of computer readable instructions to execute a method of generating a selectively rotatable view of data, the method comprising:

accessing a set of source data;

generating a first view of a portion of the source data to present via a user interface;

presenting a user-activatable interface resource to select at least one additional view of the at least a portion of the source data linked via a set of layer linkages to the first view; and

initiating a view transition to the at least one additional view via the view management module.

18. The computer readable storage medium claim 17, wherein the set of source data comprises at least one of a spreadsheet and a database, and the first view and the at least one additional view each comprise a separately viewable layer of the source data.

19. The computer readable storage medium of claim 17, wherein the user-activatable interface resource comprises a view transition icon, and activation of the view transition icon initiates a rotational view transition to the at least one additional view.

20. The computer readable storage medium of claim 17, wherein the at least one additional view comprises a plurality of additional views, and repeated activation of the view transition icon generates a return to the first view after display of a last view in the plurality of additional views.