System and method of providing and utilizing an object schema to facilitate mapping between disparate domains

• US 7,685,155 B2
• Filed: 03/23/2004
• Issued: 03/23/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 03/23/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Swan, Dempsey R., Zhu, Jason Z., Cengiz, Ilker, Sceppa, David E., Bolognese, Luca, Conrad, Andrew J.
• Primary Examiner(s): Padmanabhan; Kavita
• Assistant Examiner(s): DAYE, CHELCIE L
• Application Number:
  US10/806,526
• Publication Number:
  US 20050216501A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,191 Days
• Field of Search: 707/3, 707/100, 707/103, 707/104.1, 707/10, 707/103.R, 707/809, 706/52
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/289 Object oriented databases
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99944 Object-oriented database structure

Abstract

The present invention relates to a system and methodology to facilitated data object persistence. An object schema is utilized to provide metadata for types in addition to what is provided by the type system for an underlying programming language. This metadata is then utilized by the system to translate data to and from user objects during a materialization or persistence process. The object schema provides information external to programming logic and type definitions. Consequently, the object schema can be deployed independent of an application thereby allowing the persistence storage of user objects to change without force the user to recompile and deploy application code.

Claims

1. A method implemented by a computing system having a processor coupled to a memory for generating an object schema used in mapping between a relational database and objects from an object oriented programming language comprising:

receiving program code that describes one or more classes which define objects, wherein the objects are components from an object oriented programming language comprising data structures and functions operable on data;

describing members of each class, wherein the members of each class comprise compound members, wherein the compound members comprise a second member and at least one of a plurality of attributes describing the members of each class, and wherein the compound members allow mapping of complex members as inline members of a given class, which allows inline mapping of arrays, structs and entity key members;

specifying relationships between the one or more classes;

receiving input from a developer through an interface component;

generating an object schema using the input received from the interface component to be employed to facilitate mapping the objects described in the received program code to tables in a relational database, wherein data in the relational database describes the objects and the data in the relational database persists, the object schema comprising;

a first data structure comprising a plurality of attributes describing the one or more classes which define the objects, the plurality of attributes describing the one or more classes comprising at least a persistence service class attribute designating a persistence service to use when persisting a particular class associated with the persistence service class attribute;

a second data structure comprising the plurality of attributes describing the members of each class, the plurality of attributes describing the members of each class comprising at least

a hidden attribute that defines if there is a hidden member in a corresponding class and manages the hidden member in a transparent fashion,

a key generator attribute designating a user class that is to act as a custom key generator, and

a key generator parameter attribute designating parameters to be passed to the custom key generator;

a third data structure comprising a plurality of attributes describing the relationships between the one or more classes, the plurality of attributes describing the relationships between the one or more classes comprising at least a relationship name attribute identifying a unique name for a relationship, and a relationship type attribute identifying a type of predefined relationship; and

wherein at least one of the members described in the second data structure contains an alias attribute to query a private member, the alias attribute pointing to a public member that is to be utilized in place of the associated private member in text of a query;

providing a relational schema that provides details regarding the relational database and utilizes metadata associated with the database to generate an implementation neutral or an implementation specific format that represents the database structure; and

providing a mapping schema that provides a mapping between the object schema and the relational schema.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the input component is a graphical user interface.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the schema is an XML schema.

4. A computer readable storage medium having stored thereon computer executable instructions, which when executed by a processor, carry out the method of claim 1.

5. A system that facilitates generating an object schema used in mapping between a relational database and objects from an application written in an object-oriented programming language, comprising:

a processor; and

a memory storing computer executable instructions, which when executed by the processor carry out the method of claim 1.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of attributes describing the one or more classes further comprises one or more of name, base class, persistence service assembly, and paths.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of attributes describing the members of each class further comprises one or more of name, key, key type, type, array length, and search inheritance hierarchy.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of attributes describing the relationships between the one or more classes further comprises one or more of parent class, child class, parent member, child member, composition, parent cardinality, child cardinality, and default span.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the relationship between the one or more classes is one of one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the relationship between the one or more classes is a parent-child relationship.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein generating the object schema further uses adaptive artificial intelligence technologies including one of a Bayesian network or neural networks to infer proper schema structures and relationships.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the program code is received in real time as it is being read or transferred en masse upon complete reading of the program code.

13. The method of claim 2, wherein the graphical user interface includes at least one of buttons, text boxes, drop-down menus, tabs, hyperlinks, check boxes, and scroll bars.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the graphical interface comprises tabs and the tabs are selected from a list of assembly, classes, inheritance, members, hidden members, keys, aliases, and relationships.

15. The method of claim 13, wherein the graphical interface comprises tabs and the tabs are selected from a list of object schema document (OSD) builder and extensible markup language (XML) output.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein the interface component is a wizard that specifies a series of steps and each step must be completed before the developer is allowed to advance to a next step in the series of steps.