EVALUATING APPLICATION COMPATIBILITY

• US 20140007057A1
• Filed: 07/02/2012
• Published: 01/02/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 07/02/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Inventors: Gill, Sunbir, Jones, Matthew A., Rajagopalan, Krishna K., Ko, Kenneth Chung Kay
• Granted Patent: US 9,189,220 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/126
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/61 Installation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/445 Program loading or initiating bootstrapping G06F9/4401; security arrangements for program loading or initiating G06F21/57
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/44505 Configuring for program initiating, e.g. using registry, configuration files
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/44589 Program code verification, e.g. Java bytecode verification, proof-carrying code high-level semantic checks G06F8/43; testing and debugging software G06F11/36

Abstract

Disclosed are various embodiments for evaluating application compatibility with computing devices. A set of applications is determined and then filtered to exclude those applications which are incompatible with a particular client. The filtering is performed by determining a capability set for the client and performing an evaluation of a compatibility expression for each application using the capability set to determine whether each application is compatible with the client. The filtered set of applications is returned and may be used in user interfaces associated with an application marketplace system.

Claims

1. A non-transitory computer-readable medium embodying a program executable in a computing device, comprising:

code that obtains a mobile application from a developer;

code that automatically determines a plurality of application requirements for the mobile application;

code that generates a compatibility expression from the application requirements;

code that obtains a set of capabilities associated with a mobile device;

code that performs an evaluation of the compatibility expression based at least in part on the set of capabilities to produce an evaluation result;

code that determines whether the mobile application is compatible with the mobile device according to the evaluation result; and

code that generates a user interface that facilitates an acquisition of the mobile application by a user for installation on the mobile device.

2. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, further comprising code that caches the evaluation result.

3. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the compatibility expression is a postfix expression, and the code that performs the evaluation is configured to perform the evaluation using a stack.

4. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, further comprising:

code that obtains a capability set identifier from the mobile device; and

wherein the code that obtains the set of capabilities is configured to load the set of capabilities from a data store according to the capability set identifier.

5. A system, comprising:

at least one computing device; and

at least one application executable in the at least one computing device, the at least one application comprising;

logic that determines a set of applications;

logic that filters the set of applications to exclude applications that are incompatible with a particular client, the logic that filters being configured to;

determine a capability set for the particular client;

obtain a corresponding compatibility expression for each one of the set of applications; and

perform an evaluation of the corresponding compatibility expression using the capability set to determine whether each one of the set of applications is compatible with the particular client; and

logic that returns the set of applications that has been filtered.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the at least one application further comprise logic that generates a user interface that facilitates a purchase of any of the set of applications that has been filtered, the applications that are incompatible with the particular client being excluded from selection through the user interface.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the applications that are incompatible with the particular client are excluded from being surfaced in the user interface.

8. The system of claim 5, wherein the set of applications corresponds to a set of mobile applications, and the client corresponds to a mobile device.

9. The system of claim 5, wherein the at least one application further comprises:

logic that obtains a developer-provided application;

logic that automatically determines a plurality of application requirements for the developer-provided application;

logic that automatically generates the corresponding compatibility expression for the developer-provided application based at least in part on the application requirements; and

logic that stores the corresponding compatibility expression in association with the developer-provided application.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the logic that automatically generates the corresponding compatibility expression is configured to generate the corresponding compatibility expression based at least in part on a plurality of business rules.

11. The system of claim 5, wherein the logic that filters is configured to send a batch of evaluation requests to a compatibility evaluation service over a network, the compatibility evaluation service being configured to perform the evaluation, each of the evaluation requests specifying a corresponding identifier for a respective one of the set of applications and an identifier for the capability set.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the at least one application further comprises:

logic that caches a plurality of responses to the batch of evaluation requests obtained from the compatibility evaluation service by way of the network; and

wherein the logic that filters is further configured to utilize at least one of the responses that have been cached for another evaluation in lieu of sending a request to the compatibility evaluation service.

13. The system of claim 5, wherein the at least one application further comprises:

logic that obtains the capability set from the particular client;

logic that determines whether the capability set matches any stored capability set in a data store;

logic that stores the capability set in the data store in response to determining that the capability set does not match any stored capability set in the data store; and

logic that associates an identifier of the capability set with the particular client.

14. The system of claim 5, wherein the at least one application further comprises logic that obtains a search query from a user, and the logic that determines the set of applications is configured to determine the set of applications based at least in part on executing the search query.

15. The system of claim 5, wherein the evaluation includes substituting a respective constant from the capability set for each of a plurality of operand variables in each corresponding compatibility expression.

16. The system of claim 5, wherein the corresponding compatibility expression is a postfix expression comprising a plurality of terms, and the logic that filters is configured to evaluate the postfix expression using a stack.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the evaluation of the corresponding compatibility expression comprises:

for each one of the terms in the postfix expression;

determine whether the one of the terms is an operator or an operand;

pushing the operand onto the stack in response to determining that the one of the terms is an operand;

popping a number of operands from the stack in response to determining that the one of the terms is an operator;

generating a result by applying the operator to the number of operands; and

pushing the result onto the stack.

18. A method, comprising the steps of:

sending, in a client computing device, a request for a list of applications to an application marketplace system, the request including an client identifier, the client identifier being associated with a set of client capabilities registered with the application marketplace system;

obtaining, in the client computing device, a list of applications from the application marketplace system, the list of applications being filtered to exclude applications which are incompatible with the set of client capabilities; and

rendering, in the client computing device, a user interface configured to present the list of applications that has been filtered.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein the request further includes at least one mutable capability characteristic of the client computing device.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the at least one mutable capability characteristic includes an operating system version.

21. The method of claim 19, wherein the at least one mutable capability characteristic includes a current wireless carrier for the client computing device.

22. The method of claim 18, further comprising the steps of:

periodically discovering, in the client computing device, the set of client capabilities for the client computing device; and

registering, in the client computing device, the set of client capabilities that has been discovered with the application marketplace system.

23. The method of claim 18, wherein the user interface is configured to facilitate an acquisition of any of the list of applications for installation on the client computing device.

24. The method of claim 18, wherein the list of applications is filtered by evaluating a corresponding compatibility expression for each one of the list of applications using the set of capabilities associated with the client identifier.

25. The method of claim 18, wherein the request includes a search query that, when executed in the application marketplace system, produces the list of applications.

26. The method of claim 18, further comprising the steps of:

caching, in the client computing device, the list of applications that has been filtered; and

rendering, in the client computing device, another user interface configured to present at least one application from the list of applications that has been cached.