Generating formatted documents

• US 8,176,412 B2
• Filed: 08/25/2009
• Issued: 05/08/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 08/25/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: ServiceNow Incorporated
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Bhandar, Manisha D., Mazzoleni, Pietro, Mukherjee, Debdoot, Reddy, Vinay K., Sinha, Vibha Singhal
• Primary Examiner(s): RIES, LAURIE ANNE
• Application Number:
  US12/547,169
• Publication Number:
  US 20110055687A1
• Time in Patent Office: 987 Days
• Field of Search: 715/234, 715/235, 715/236, 715/237, 715/239, 715/243
• US Class Current: 715/235
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 17/00 Digital computing or data processing equipment or methods, specially adapted for specific functions information retrieval, database structures or file system structures therefor G06F16/00
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/103 Formatting, i.e. changing of presentation of documents automatic justification G06F40/189; automatic line break hyphenation G06F40/191
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/186 Templates

Abstract

Techniques for generating one or more formatted documents are provided. The techniques include receiving content from one or more data sources, enabling specification of one or more formatting elements to be used in one or more generated formatted documents, enabling specification of a structure to be used in the one or more generated formatted documents, enabling specification of a style of the one or more formatting elements to be used in the one or more generated formatted documents, and generating one or more formatted documents based on the specifications.

Claims

1. A method for generating one or more formatted documents, wherein the method comprises:

receiving content from one or more data sources;

enabling specification of one or more formatting elements to be used in one or more generated formatted documents;

enabling specification of a structure to be used in the one or more generated formatted documents;

enabling specification of a style of the one or more formatting elements to be used in the one or more generated formatted documents; and

generating a template used to generate one or more formatted documents based on the specifications, wherein generating a template comprises automatically determining a formatting element used to render each data model element from information hidden in a schema from the received content and reverse-engineering one or more styles of one or more formatting elements from existing documents.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein generating a template used to generate one or more formatted documents comprises:

inferring a position of each data model element and establishing an order of one or more sections in a document.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein establishing an order of one or more sections in a document comprises studying one or more containment relationships in the schema.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving content from one or more data sources comprises receiving content from one or more data sources built according to a schema represented in a parsable format.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein enabling specification of a structure to be used in the one or more generated formatted documents comprises using a graphical user interface (GUI) to determine where a data model element will appear within a document and how the document will be formatted.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein enabling specification of a structure to be used in the one or more generated formatted documents comprises determining the formatting element used to render a document.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein enabling specification of a style of the one or more formatting elements to be used in the one or more generated formatted documents comprises using a style guide.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein generating one or more formatted documents based on the specifications comprises generating one or more printable formatted documents based on the specifications.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising providing a system, wherein the system comprises one or more distinct software modules, each of the one or more distinct software modules being embodied on a tangible computer-readable recordable storage medium, and wherein the one or more distinct software modules comprise a document mapping tool module and a document generator module executing on a hardware processor.

10. A computer program product comprising a tangible computer readable recordable storage medium including computer useable program code for generating one or more formatted documents, the computer program product including:

computer useable program code for receiving content from one or more data sources;

computer useable program code for enabling specification of one or more formatting elements to be used in one or more generated formatted documents;

computer useable program code for enabling specification of a structure to be used in the one or more generated formatted documents;

computer useable program code for enabling specification of a style of the one or more formatting elements to be used in the one or more generated formatted documents; and

computer useable program code for generating a template used to generate one or more formatted documents based on the specifications, wherein generating a template comprises automatically determining a formatting element used to render each data model element from information hidden in a schema from the received content and reverse-engineering one or more styles of one or more formatting elements from existing documents.

11. The computer program product of claim 10, wherein the computer useable program code for generating a template used to generate one or more formatted documents comprises:

computer useable program code for inferring a position of each data model element and establishing an order of one or more sections in a document.

12. The computer program product of claim 10, wherein the computer useable program code for enabling specification of a structure to be used in the one or more generated formatted documents comprises computer useable program code for using a graphical user interface (GUI) to determine where a data model element will appear within a document and how the document will be formatted.

13. The computer program product of claim 10, wherein the computer useable program code comprises one or more distinct software modules, and wherein the one or more distinct software modules comprise a document mapping tool module and a document generator module executing on a hardware processor.

14. A system for generating one or more formatted documents, comprising:

a memory; and

at least one processor coupled to the memory and operative to;

receive content from one or more data sources;

enable specification of one or more formatting elements to be used in one or more generated formatted documents;

enable specification of a structure to be used in the one or more generated formatted documents;

enable specification of a style of the one or more formatting elements to be used in the one or more generated formatted documents; and

generate a template used to generate one or more formatted documents based on the specifications, wherein generating a template comprises automatically determining a formatting element used to render each data model element from information hidden in a schema from the received content and reverse-engineering one or more styles of one or more formatting elements from existing documents.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the at least one processor coupled to the memory operative to generate a template used to generate one or more formatted documents is further operative to:

infer a position of each data model element and establishing an order of one or more sections in a document.

16. The system of claim 14, wherein the at least one processor coupled to the memory operative to enable specification of a structure to be used in the one or more generated formatted documents is further operative to use a graphical user interface (GUI) to determine where a data model element will appear within a document and how the document will be formatted.

17. The system of claim 14, further comprising a tangible computer-readable recordable storage medium having one or more distinct software modules embodied thereon, the one or more distinct software modules comprising a document mapping tool module and a document generator module executing on a hardware processor.