Pluggable formatters

• US 7,120,639 B1
• Filed: 06/27/2001
• Issued: 10/10/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 06/27/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Kakivaya, Gopala Krishna R., de Jong, Stephen Peter, Roxe, Joseph L.
• Primary Examiner(s): Pardo, Thuy N.
• Application Number:
  US09/892,684
• Time in Patent Office: 1,931 Days
• Field of Search: 707100-103, 707 1- 2, 707/6, 717/100, 717/101, 717/102, 717/103.R, 717/104.1
• US Class Current: 707/694
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/465 Distributed object oriented systems remote method invocation [RMI] G06F9/548
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/541 via adapters, e.g. between incompatible applications
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/955 Object-oriented
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99942 Manipulating data structure, e.g. compression, compaction, compilation
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99943 Generating database or data structure, e.g. via user interface
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99944 Object-oriented database structure
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing

Abstract

A system and method is provided for facilitating employment of pluggable formatters by providing a variety of functions or services outside the formatter for handling various functions associated with conventional formatters. The services can be employed to provide the basic functionality associated with serializing and deserializing graphs of objects. The present invention provides facilities which support the plugging in or functionality of formatters in any given wire format for transferring across a connection or between processes.

Claims

1. A system that facilitates employment of a pluggable formatter, comprising:

a decision module that retrieves a first data structure as a graph of objects for serialization thereof;

a plurality of rule sets that define serialization information about data structure types;

a surrogate that specifies serialization instructions for all objects of a given type; and

a serialization selector that determines a rule set of the plurality of rule sets to provide to the decision module based on the data structure type, the decision module populating a second data structure based on the serialization information and providing a pluggable formatter with the second data structure, so that the pluggable formatter can serialize the second data structure to an externalized format defined by the pluggable formatter, the pluggable formatter is selected from a variety of pluggable formatters employed on the system.

2. The system of claim 1, the rule set is definable in the data structure.

3. The system of claim 1, the rule set is defined in a third party file.

4. The system of claim 1, the rule set is a default format based on markings in the first data structure.

5. The system of claim 1, the first data structure being a graph of objects.

6. The system of claim 1, further comprising an object ID generator coupled to the decision module, the object ID generator assigns object IDs to each object in the graph of objects.

7. The system of claim 1, the data structure containing information within the data structure that the serialization selector utilizes in determining a rule set.

8. The system of claim 1, the decision module is integrated into the pluggable formatter.

9. A system that facilitates employment of a pluggable formatter, comprising:

a surrogate file that implements serialization instructions for all objects of a given type;

a pluggable formatter selected from a variety of employed pluggable formatters that produces a decoded serialized stream based at least in part on the serialization instructions of the surrogate file;

a formatter services component that receives the decoded serialized stream from the pluggable formatter and creates a data structure as a graph of objects for deserialization of the decoded serialized stream; and

an object manager that tracks data in the decoded serialized stream and determines forward references to additional data to provide fixups to the data structure upon receipt of the additional data.

10. The system of claim 9, further comprising a serialization selector that determines a rule set of a plurality of rule sets to provide to the formatter services component based on the data structure type being deserialized, the formatting services component populates the data structure based on the determined rule set.

11. The system of claim 10, the rule set is definable in the data structure.

12. The system of claim 10, the rule set is in a third party file.

13. The system of claim 9, the formatter services component reinstantiates each object of a graph of objects and the object manager performs fixups on the objects after the graph of objects have been deserialized.

14. A method for deserialization of a stream into a graph of objects, the method comprising:

implementing a predefined rule set for all objects of a certain type via a surrogate;

selecting a pluggable formatter from a variety of employed pluggable formatters to provide a decoded serialized stream;

receiving the decoded serialized stream from the pluggable formatter;

retrieving from the decoded serialized stream an object from a graph of objects;

determining an object type for deserialization;

instantiating an uninitialized instance of the object type;

selecting a serialization rule set from one of a user defined rule set in the object and a user defined rule set in another object and a default rule set; and

populating the uninitialized instance of the object type based on the selected serialization rule set.

15. The method of claim 14, further comprising registering the object with an object manager.

16. The method of claim 14, further comprising tracking forward references to other objects within the object.

17. The method of claim 14, further comprising repeating retrieving, determining, instantiating and populating for each object in an object graph.

18. The method of claim 17, further comprising performing fixups on the objects in the object graph caused by forward references.

19. A system that facilitates making formatters pluggable, the system comprising:

means for providing serialization information of an object from a graph of objects to a pluggable formatter through assignment of a surrogate file, so that the pluggable formatter can serialize the object in a selectable externalized format, the pluggable formatter is chosen from a variety of pluggable formatters implemented on the system;

means for tracking deserialization of the object outside the pluggable formatter;

means for instantiating an uninitialized instance of an object type, so that the object information can populate the object type; and

means for performing fixups on the objects due to forward references.