Vocabulary and syntax based data transformation

• US 7,284,196 B2
• Filed: 10/07/2002
• Issued: 10/16/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 10/05/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Vitria Technology Incorporated (Innovation Technology Group Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: Vitria Technology Incorporated (Innovation Technology Group Incorporated)
• Inventors: Lee, Tony Sang-min, Skeen, Marion Dale
• Primary Examiner(s): Alam; Shahid
• Assistant Examiner(s): Stevens; Robert
• Application Number:
  US10/265,162
• Publication Number:
  US 20030088543A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,835 Days
• Field of Search: 715/523, 715/513, 715/532, 707/1
• US Class Current: 715/234
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/12 Use of codes for handling textual entities
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/143 Markup, e.g. Standard Generalized Markup Language [SGML] or Document Type Definition [DTD]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/157 using dictionaries or tables
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/242 Dictionaries
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/06 Buying, selling or leasing transactions
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99931 Database or file accessing

Abstract

A framework for accomplishing vocabulary-based data transformations, for interfacing systems of disparate data formats. The framework is layered to separate the terms of documents form the underlying concepts corresponding thereto. The layers include an ontology layer for defining concepts, a vocabulary layer for labeling the concepts, a specification layer that specifies the concepts and labels, and a representation layer for encoding data in conformance with the specification layer. The separation enables the relationships between existing transformations to be automatically leveraged for minimizing user input for creating new transformations.

Claims

1. A data transformation system for accomplishing vocabulary-based data transformations of a first document to a second document using a computer-implemented framework that separates concepts from terms used to name the concepts, said data transformation system comprising at least one processor for executing:

a specification parser that uses an ontology layer of the computer-implemented framework to define concepts, concept semantics, and concept structure used in the first document to derive an initial ontology dictionary;

a specification analyzer that uses a vocabulary layer for labeling the concepts in the first document to derive an initial vocabulary dictionary;

a specification refiner that uses a specification layer of the computer-implemented framework to specify refined concepts, refined concept semantics, refined concept structure, and refined labels of the initial ontology dictionary and the initial vocabulary dictionary to create a refined ontology dictionary and a refined vocabulary dictionary in computer-readable format; and

a format generator that uses a representation layer for encoding data from the refined ontology dictionary and a refined vocabulary dictionary in conformance with the specification layer to create the second document based on the vocabulary-based data transformation of the first document.

2. A computer-implemented method for transforming a first document to a second document, said method comprising:

developing an ontology specifying the concepts of a business process;

parsing a first specification to determine machine processible definitions of a vocabulary and machine processible definitions of an ontology;

analyzing the machine processible definitions of the vocabulary and the machine processible definitions of the ontology to build an initial vocabulary dictionary and an initial ontology dictionary;

refining the initial ontology dictionary by removing concept redundancy by identifying equivalent concepts, selecting one of the equivalent concepts, and updating the initial ontology dictionary to reflect the selected concept in a refined ontology dictionary;

updating the vocabulary from which the machine processible definitions of the first document are taken and correspond to concepts of the refined ontology dictionary to create a refined vocabulary dictionary;

creating a second vocabulary in the second document corresponding to concepts of the refined ontology dictionary to thereby establish a relationship between the vocabulary of the first document and the vocabulary of the second document through the concepts of the refined ontology dictionary;

determining the created concepts of the refined ontology dictionary corresponding to the refined vocabulary dictionary of the first document based on the first vocabulary;

determining vocabulary of the second document corresponding to the created concepts; and

converting vocabulary of the first document to vocabulary of the second document based on said determining steps.

3. A method as recited in claim 2, wherein said step of developing an ontology comprises assigning a unique identification value to each of the concepts.

4. A method as recited in claim 2, wherein said developing an ontology step comprises arranging plural variables in a hierarchical structure and correlating a concept to each unique combination of variable and the containment of the variable in structure.

5. A method as recited in claim 4, wherein the structure is an XML Data Dictionary.

6. A computer-implemented method for transforming a first document of a first vocabulary to a second document of a second vocabulary within a collaborative system for effecting a business process, said method comprising:

extracting first data by parsing at least a portion of the first document in accordance with parsing rules;

determining a first concept corresponding to the first data based on the first vocabulary;

entering the first concept in an initial ontology dictionary;

determining a second concept of the second document corresponding to the first concept;

removing redundant concepts by identifying equivalent concepts among the first concept and the second concept, selecting one of the equivalent concepts, and updating the determined first concept and the determined second concept from the initial ontology dictionary to create a refined ontology dictionary to reflect the selected equivalent concept; and

generating second data corresponding to the second document based on generation rules.

7. A method as recited in claim 6, wherein the parsing rules are based on the first vocabulary and the generation rules are based on said second vocabulary.