Automated Porting of Application to Mobile Infrastructures

• US 20140215446A1
• Filed: 01/21/2014
• Published: 07/31/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 01/29/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Snowflake, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Artinsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Araya, Carlos, Sanabria, Ivn, Zoufaly, Federico, Rojas, Mauricio, Infante, Edgar, Garcia, Olman
• Granted Patent: US 9,459,862 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/137
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/427 Parsing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/447 Target code generation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/456 Parallelism detection
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/76 Adapting program code to run in a different environment; Porting

Abstract

Techniques to automatically port applications to a mobile infrastructure using code separation with semantic guarantees are disclosed. Porting enterprise applications from to a target architecture another is effected via separating code into constituent layers of the target architecture. To preserve semantics, code transformations are enforced via an abstract syntax tree structure. The generated code may have various code wrappers and/or infrastructure elements so the ported application will operate in the target architecture. Various techniques are disclosed regarding specific code wrappers and/or infrastructure elements to address operating issues including, but not limited to, architectural issues, network latency, framework changes, regulatory issues.

Claims

1. A method to transform source code from an input architecture to a target architecture comprising:

receiving one or more input source code files of an n-tier application, the input source code files comprising a plurality of programming language code constructs;

receiving one or more target grammars corresponding to the mobile form-factor constrained target architecture;

receiving an architectural specification corresponding to the n-tier input application;

receiving an architectural specification corresponding to the target architecture;

generating an annotated abstract syntax tree representing at least one code construct from at least one input source code file, based at least on one or more target grammars, the n-tier architectural specification and the target architecture specification, wherein at least one of the annotations comprises a transformation rule to map the code construct from the at least one of the input source code files represented in the annotated abstract syntax tree to the target architecture; and

generating target source code based at least on the annotated abstract syntax tree comprising at least one mobile component and at least one server component.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the target architecture constrained by any one of the following:

a mobile form factor constrained target architecture,

a distributed network constrained architecture,

a framework specific architecture,

a geographic region constrained architecture,

an architecture constrained by regulatory provisions, and

an extension to a framework specific architecture.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the generating target source code comprises:

separating a plurality of components from the programming code constructs from the one or more input source code files represented in the abstract syntax tree, wherein the components are candidates for one of a plurality of component classes;

selecting from the components at least one component belonging to a client class and the at least component belonging to a server class;

adding wrapping code to the at least one of the selected components; and

adding at least one infrastructure element, wherein the infrastructure element provides functionality not provided from the programming code constructs from the one or more input source code files represented in the abstract syntax tree.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the separating is based at least on iteratively measuring the distance of candidate components to component class types of the target architecture and accordingly repositioning the components into the client or server component class type based on a re-accommodation algorithm.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein the separating is based at least on profiling the compiled input source code according to predetermined use cases.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the input source code files correspond to a plurality of projects.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the target architecture is a mobile form factor constrained target architecture;

and wherein the transformation rule is any one of;

rearranging the location of user interface elements,

eliminating of selected user interface elements, and

substituting selected user interface elements.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the target architecture is a mobile form factor constrained target architecture;

and

wherein the transformation rule is to add infrastructure element code identifying whether a hosting computer for the at least one mobile component is a desktop computer or a mobile computer, and presenting a desktop computer version of the at least one mobile component if the hosting computer is a desktop computer and presenting a mobile computer version of the at least one mobile component if the hosting computer is a mobile computer.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the target architecture is a mobile form factor constrained target architecture;

and

wherein the received target architecture specification includes features specific to any one of the following;

the target architecture'"'"'s mobile computer,

the target architecture'"'"'s mobile computer'"'"'s operating system version,

the target architecture'"'"'s cellular carrier, and

the intended regional area of operation of the target architecture.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein the generating target source code includes generating wrapper code for the at least one mobile component such that the at least one mobile component invokes an API corresponding to a feature specific to a third party extension to a platform.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the generating target code includes generating wrapper code for the at least one client or at least one server component such to invoke an API specific to a third party web service.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the third party web service is an authentication service, and the wrapper code ensures that authentication information is not sent in plaintext.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a second architectural specification corresponding to a second mobile form-factor constrained target architecture;

wherein the generating target source code comprises generating target source code corresponding to the first mobile form-factor constrained target architecture, and simultaneously generating target source code corresponding to a second mobile form-factor constrained target architecture.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein the target architecture is an architecture constrained by regulatory provisions, and

wherein the feature specific to the mobile phone factor is an invocation of a voice of IP API, and the wrapper code ensures that identification information is registered to enable E-911 compliance.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein the target architecture is a distributed network constrained architecture, and wherein the transformation rule is any one of the following:

enforced timing for client and server state synchronization,

generated content caching;

connection pooling; and

lazy transactions.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein the target architecture is a distributed network constrained architecture, and wherein the generated client includes an added infrastructure element with functionality to detect the presence of a cellular network and a WiFi network, and load balance between the two networks.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the load balancing is optimized to minimize data plan charges.

18. The method of claim 1, wherein the target architecture is a distributed network constrained architecture, and wherein the received target architecture specification includes features specific to the mobile network constrained target architecture'"'"'s mobile computer, operating system variation, and cellular carrier.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein the generated mobile component includes an added infrastructure element with functionality to report self-optimizing network specific performance parameters to the cellular network of the cellular carrier, and to perform client side network adjustments as directed by the cellular network of the cellular carrier.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the generated server component includes an added infrastructure element with functionality to vary PDP priority of constituent served data according to input parameters from the mobile component.

21. A system to perform a software application transformation comprising:

a processor;

a memory, communicatively coupled to the processor;

a software user interface resident in memory configured to specify source code files of a software application, to specify one or more grammars, to specify an input architecture and a target mobile architecture with at least one architectural constraint;

a transformation rules generator, configured to generate transformation rules based at least on the specified input architecture and the specified target architecture, wherein the specified target architecture comprises at least one component type;

an abstract syntax tree generator, configured to generate an annotated abstract syntax tree based on at least one specified source code file, at least one specified grammar, and at least one generated transformation rule;

a component recommendation engine, configured to identify candidate components according to at least one component type; and

an abstract syntax tree transformer, configured to generate at least one mobile component and at least one server component from any candidate components such that at least one transformation to address at least one constraint is applied.

22. The system of claim 21, wherein the one or more specified grammars includes at least one of the following:

Pre-HTML 5 HTML;

HTML 5;

javascript;

ecmascript;

vbscript;

the java programming language;

pre .NET Visual Basic™

;

a .NET programming language;

Objective C;

PHP;

Perl;

Python;

C;

C++; and

SQL.

23. The system of claim 21, wherein the target mobile architecture includes a cloud based server side.

24. The system of claim 21, wherein the target architecture constraint is any one of the following:

a mobile form factor constrained target architecture,

a distributed network constrained architecture,

a framework specific architecture,

a geographic region constrained architecture,

an architecture constrained by regulatory provisions, and

an extension to a framework specific architecture.

25. A system to perform a software application transformation comprising:

a processor;

a memory, communicatively coupled to the processor;

a software user interface resident in memory configured to specify source code files of a software application, to specify one or more grammars, to specify an input architecture and a target mobile architecture with at least one architectural constraint, and to request input from a technician;

a transformation rules generator, configured to generate transformation rules based at least on the specified input architecture and the specified target architecture, wherein the specified target architecture comprises at least one component type;

an abstract syntax tree generator, configured to generate an annotated abstract syntax tree based on at least one specified source code file, at least one specified grammar, and at least one generated transformation rule;

a component recommendation engine, configured to identify candidate components according to at least one component type; and

an abstract syntax tree transformer, configured to generate at least one mobile component and at least one server component from any candidate components such that at least one transformation to address at least one constraint is applied based at least on input from the technician.

26. The system of claim 25, wherein the target architecture is constrained by any one of the following:

a mobile form factor constrained target architecture,

a distributed network constrained architecture,

a framework specific architecture,

a geographic region constrained architecture,

an architecture constrained by regulatory provisions, and

an extension to a framework specific architecture.