DOCUMENT TRANSFORMATION

• US 20110093774A1
• Filed: 10/15/2009
• Published: 04/21/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 10/15/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Lu, Alison Q., Joshi, Vishal R., Davis, Joseph M.
• Granted Patent: US 9,965,453 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/236
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/154 Tree transformation for tree-structured or markup documents, e.g. XSLT, XSL-FO or stylesheets

Abstract

Aspects of the subject matter described herein relate to transforming documents. In aspects, a transformer obtains a source document and a transformation document. The transformation document indicates changes to make to the source document to transform the source document. The transformation document also includes location information that indicates where the changes are to be made. The transforms indicated by the transformation document may be extensible. Using the source document and the transformation document, the transformer transforms the source document into a target document. The transformer may be part of a development environment used to develop applications.

Claims

1. A method implemented at least in part by a computer, the method comprising:

obtaining a copy of a source XML document;

obtaining a transformation document that includes declarative statements that indicate modifications to make to the copy to transform the copy into a target XML document, the transformation document also including location information that indicates nodes in the copy upon which the modifications are to operate;

transforming the copy of the source XML document according to the transformation document to create the target XML document; and

providing the target XML document.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the copy and the transformation document have an identical schema that expresses constraints on structure and content of the copy and transformation document, the constraints additional to constraints imposed by XML.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein obtaining a transformation document that includes declarative statements comprises obtaining a transformation document that differs from the copy only by transform statements and setting changes included in the transformation document that are not included in the copy.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein obtaining a copy of a source XML document comprises reading data corresponding to the source XML document from a file and placing the data in volatile memory.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein obtaining a transformation document that includes declarative statements comprises obtaining a transformation document that includes transforms, each transform indicating an action to take with respect to a node of the copy.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein obtaining a transformation document that includes transforms comprises obtaining transforms that indicate one or more of removing a node along with its children, if any, removing all nodes under a parent node, inserting a node under a parent node, setting one or more attributes of a node, and removing one or more attributes of a node.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein obtaining a transformation document that includes location information comprises obtaining a transformation document that encodes the location information in nodes of the transformation document, at least some of the nodes of the transformation document corresponding to at least some nodes of the copy.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein obtaining a transformation document that includes location information comprises obtaining a transformation document that includes locators, the locators indicating match conditions and/or equality/inequality conditions applicable to one or more attributes of nodes of the copy.

9. In a computing environment, an apparatus, comprising:

a parser operable to read a copy of a source document and to read transformation data from a transformation document, the source document including first configuration data for use by the application in conjunction with the application executing in a first environment;

a location manager operable to determine a location at which to make a modification to the copy, the location manager operable to use the transformation data to determine the location; and

a transform manager operable to determine a transform corresponding to the modification, the transform manager further operable to apply the transform to the copy at the location to create transformed data suitable for the application for when the application executes in a second environment.

10. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein the parser is further operable to identify nodes in the copy and the transformation document, the copy and the transformation document having nodes arranged in a hierarchical manner, each node including a set of related data.

11. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein the location manager is operable to determine a location at which to make a modification to the copy by matching a transform node included in the transformation document with a corresponding node included in the source document, the transform node including an indication of the transform.

12. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein the location manager is operable to determine a location at which to make a modification to the copy by matching a path indicated in the transformation data.

13. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein the location manager is operable to determine a location at which at which to make a modification to the copy by matching a condition indicated in the transformation data.

14. The apparatus of claim 9, further comprising an error manager operable to identify errors, if any, in the transformation document and to display, via a user interface, text associated with the errors, the transformation document including the text.

15. The apparatus of claim 9, further comprising an extensibility manager operable to call custom code in conjunction with a transform that is not natively implemented by the transform manager.

16. A computer storage medium having computer-executable instructions, which when executed perform actions, comprising:

obtaining first configuration data for an application that is operable to execute in a first environment;

obtaining transformation data that indicates modifications to make to the first configuration data to create second configuration data suitable for when the application is executing in a second environment, the transformation data encoded in a declarative language; and

transforming the first configuration data according to the modifications indicated in the transformation data to create the second configuration data.

17. The computer storage medium of claim 16, wherein obtaining first configuration data for an application comprises obtaining the configuration data from an XML document.

18. The computer storage medium of claim 16, wherein obtaining transformation data that indicates modifications comprises obtaining transformation data that includes transforms, the transforms indicating changes to make to the first configuration data to transform the first configuration data into the second configuration data.

19. The computer storage medium of claim 16, wherein obtaining transformation data that indicates modifications comprises obtaining transformation data that includes location information, the location information indicating locations within the first configuration data at which the modifications are to be made.

20. The computer storage medium of claim 16, wherein transforming the first configuration data according to the modifications indicated in the transformation data to create the second configuration data comprises placing markers in the second configuration data to indicate that data in the second configuration data needs to be filled in to prepare the second environment for the application.