INTERACTIVE SYNCHRONIZATION OF WEB DATA AND SPREADSHEETS

• US 20110209048A1
• Filed: 02/19/2010
• Published: 08/25/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 02/19/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Wen, Ji-Rong, Song, Ruihua, Zhang, Ruochi, Scott, Matthew Robert
• Granted Patent: US 9,489,366 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/236
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/95 Retrieval from the web
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/177 of tables; using ruled lines
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/18 of spreadsheets form-filling G06F40/174

Abstract

Interactive synchronization of Web data and spreadsheets is usable to build data wrappers based on any type of data found in a document. Such data wrappers can be used to interact with source documents, crawl a network for additional data, map data from across domains, and/or synchronize data from dynamic Web documents.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method of wrapper induction comprising:

employing a processor to execute computer-executable instructions stored on a computer-readable medium to perform the following acts;

building a wrapper of data for a spreadsheet application, the building comprising;

receiving a set of data selected from a document;

receiving characteristics of the data selected from the document, the characteristics usable to identify similar data in the document or other documents;

importing the set of data from the document into the spreadsheet document; and

storing the wrapper in the spreadsheet document.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the building a wrapper further comprises:

extracting a second set of data from the document based on the received selected set of data; and

importing the second set of data from the document into the spreadsheet document.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising training the wrapper to determine appropriate data to be extracted from at least a second document based on the received selected set of data and the extracted second set of data, the document and the second document comprising documents available over a network.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the document and the second document comprise documents available over a network that belong to different domains.

5. The method of claim 2, wherein the data selected or the data extracted comprises binary data comprising at least an image file.

6. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

building a second wrapper of data for the spreadsheet application from data of a second document, the document and the second document comprising documents available over a network from different domains; and

mapping the wrapper and the second wrapper to create a cross-domain wrapper.

7. The method of claim 2, further comprising displaying a user interface, the user interface configured to receive instructions for at least one of:

storing the wrapper in a computer-readable medium;

storing a copy of the wrapper in the computer readable medium;

or

naming the wrapper or the copy of the wrapper.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the storing the wrapper in the spreadsheet document comprises encoding the wrapper using Extensible Markup Language (XML).

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the building a wrapper further comprises providing a graphical indication of a recommendation of additional data from the document to be selected for importing into the spreadsheet document.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the building a wrapper further comprises providing a graphical indication on the spreadsheet document that represents a location on the spreadsheet document corresponding to the data selected from the document when a cursor is located over the data selected from the document.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the building a wrapper further comprises providing a graphical label on the spreadsheet document that represents a type of data corresponding to the type of data imported from the document.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the building a wrapper further comprises defining a data template of the data imported into the spreadsheet document, the defining comprising:

receiving a description of a data type that corresponds to the data selected from the document, wherein the data type comprises at least one of an image file, a degree of measurement, a plain text file, a hyperlink, a temperature, or a percentage; and

storing the description of the data type in the template.

13. A system for training a data wrapper for a spreadsheet application comprising:

memory coupled to a processor; and

a wrapper training module, stored in the memory and executable on the processor, to;

receive a wrapper comprising data selected and extracted from a first document available over a network;

determine appropriate data to be extracted from one or more other documents available over a network based on the data selected and extracted from the first document available over a network;

extract the appropriate data from the other documents available over a network; and

store the appropriate data in the spreadsheet document.

14. The system of claim 13, further comprising a wrapper storing module, stored in the memory and executable on the processor, to store the wrapper in the spreadsheet document.

15. The system of claim 13, further comprising a user interface module, stored in the memory and executable on the processor to display a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) for each document available over a network associated with each data stored in the spreadsheet document.

16. The system of claim 13, the user interface module further configured to display data editing options and/or wrapper editing options for editing the received selected data or the extracted additional data prior to storing the data or the additional data in the spreadsheet document and/or for editing the wrapper after data has been stored in the spreadsheet document.

17. The system of claim 13, further comprising a network crawling module, stored in the memory and executable on the processor, to:

crawl additional documents on a network;

search each additional document crawled; and

employ the wrapper training module to import appropriate data to the spreadsheet document, wherein the appropriate data is related to the received selected data and the extracted additional data.

18. The system of claim 13, further comprising:

a wrapper mapping module, stored in the memory and executable on the processor, to;

receive a first wrapper created based on data from a first document available on a network;

receive at least a second wrapper created based on data from at least a second document available on a network, the first document and the at least a second document comprising different markup language structures; and

map the data from the first wrapper to the data from the at least a second wrapper to create a cross-domain wrapper.

19. One or more computer-readable storage media, storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed on a processor, perform acts for mapping one or more data wrappers, the acts comprising:

receiving one or more data wrappers from a spreadsheet application, the one or more data wrappers created from data of at least two different documents, the at least two different documents belonging to different domains; and

mapping the one or more data wrappers together to create a cross-domain wrapper.

20. The one or more computer-readable storage media of claim 19, the acts further comprising:

storing the cross-domain wrapper in a spreadsheet document of the spreadsheet application.