Method and apparatus for identifying programming object attributes

• US 7,584,169 B2
• Filed: 03/11/2005
• Issued: 09/01/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 07/20/2000
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Sarkar, Abhijit, Connell, Edward W., Chambers, Robert L., Lipe, Ralph
• Primary Examiner(s): Rones; Charles
• Assistant Examiner(s): Quader; Fazlul
• Application Number:
  US11/078,812
• Publication Number:
  US 20050154724A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,635 Days
• Field of Search: 707/1, 707/2, 707/3, 707/4, 707/5, 707/6, 707/7, 707/9, 707/10, 707/100, 707/101
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4488 Object-oriented
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/465 Distributed object oriented systems remote method invocation [RMI] G06F9/548
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/197 Probabilistic grammars, e.g. word n-grams
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/26 Speech to text systems G10L15/08 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/28 Constructional details of speech recognition systems
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1101 Session protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/561 Adding application-functional data or data for application control, e.g. adding metadata
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/564 Enhancement of application control based on intercepted application data
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/568 Storing data temporarily at an intermediate stage, e.g. caching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99932 Access augmentation or optimizing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• 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

The present invention provides a method and computer-readable medium for searching for programming objects on a computer system. Under the invention, object attributes that are stored outside of a static attribute storage area are inspected during the search for programming objects.

Claims

1. A computer-readable storage medium having computer-executable instructions for performing steps comprising:

receiving a designation of a category path in a registry for a category of programming objects;

receiving an instruction to search for a programming object in the category of programming objects wherein the programming object comprises a set of programming instructions that supports at least one method that is called in the programming object, and wherein the search is based on at least one search attribute;

searching below a tokens key located beneath the category path in the registry for sets of attributes for programming objects in the category that match the at least one search attribute;

searching below a token enums key located beneath the category path in the registry for token enumerator programming objects that will search for sets of attributes for programming objects in the category, wherein searching below the tokens key for sets of attributes for programming objects is performed before searching for token enumerator programming objects below the token enums key;

instantiating a token enumerator based on a unique class identifier for a token enumerator programming object stored in a data entry for the token enumerator name in the registry beneath the token enums key beneath the category path;

using the instantiated token enumerator to search for a set of attributes outside of the registry; and

returning references to programming objects based on a set of attributes found by the token enumerator outside of the registry and a set of attributes for programming objects found beneath the category path in the registry.

2. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 1 wherein the step of returning a reference comprises:

instantiating an object token for a found set of attributes;

initializing the object token to point to the set of attributes; and

returning a pointer to the object token.

3. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 1 wherein the step of searching comprises searching through an Internet connection.

4. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 1 wherein the step of receiving an instruction to search comprises receiving a required search attribute.

5. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 1 wherein the step of receiving an instruction to search comprises receiving an optional search attribute.

6. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 5 wherein the step of returning a reference comprises returning a list of references that are ordered based on matches between the optional search attribute and attributes in found sets of attributes.