Constructing view compositions for domain-specific environments

• US 8,411,085 B2
• Filed: 06/27/2008
• Issued: 04/02/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 06/27/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Rubin, Darryl E., Gittelman, Arye, Voss, Florian, Mital, Vijay
• Primary Examiner(s): Nguyen, Phu K
• Application Number:
  US12/163,867
• Publication Number:
  US 20090322743A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,740 Days
• Field of Search: 345/419, 345/420, 345/440, 345/619, 434/236, 704/9
• US Class Current: 345/420
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 11/206 Drawing of charts or graphs
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 13/00 Animation
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 19/00 Manipulating 3D models or images for computer graphics

Abstract

Visual items may each be constructed and placed in position using logic defined by a view component corresponding to each visual item, where that logic may depend on one or more values populated into parameter(s) of the view component. Some of those parameter values may correspond to known model parameter values. Others, however, may have been solved for using a model that defines analytical relationships between the model parameters. In one embodiment, which of the model parameters are known, and which are unknown, may not be predetermined. Accordingly, a solver might be prepared for multiple solve operation paths even using a single model. The view composition process may be entirely data-driven, and may include a mechanism for canonicalizing input data, and binding canonicalized input data to the model parameters. The view composition framework may operate the same regardless of the domain.

Claims

1. A method, implemented at a computing system having one or more processors, for providing a composition framework that is usable to construct view compositions for any of a diverse variety of domain-specific environments by altering data rather than recoding the composition framework to adapt to a given type of domain, the method for providing a composition framework generating, at the computing system, a user interactive composite view of visual items, and wherein the method is comprised of:

importing at a model importation component an analytical model for performing model analytics, the analytical model including model parameters and analytical relationships among the model parameters;

formulating and/or selecting at an authoring component domain-specific data for a particular domain environment, the domain-specific data comprising;

input data that defines data fields which provide values to the analytical model,

analytics data that defines bindings between the data fields and the model parameters, and

view data that defines how results of performing model analytics on the input data using the analytical model are to be visualized in a view composition;

at a pipeline, receiving from the authoring component the domain-specific data for the particular domain environment, and wherein the pipeline comprises;

a data portion, which is comprised of;

a data access component for receiving the domain-specific input data from the authoring component, and

a plurality of data canonicalization components for placing the input data into a canonical form that is consistent with schemas understood by an analytics portion to the extent the input data in not already in canonical form when input to the data access component and which provide canonical data to the analytics portion;

the analytics portion, which is comprised of;

a data-model binder that binds data fields from the canonical data received from the data portion to one or more of the model parameters, as defined by the domain-specific analytics data, and

a modeling component that performs model analytics based on the imported analytical model, including (i) defining the analytical relationships between the model parameters, the analytical relationships being categorized into one or more of equations, rules and constraints, and (ii) solving for output model variables; and

a view portion, which is comprised of;

a model view binder that binds model parameters received from the analytics portion to one or more view components stored in a view components repository, each view component having associated logic defined by the domain-specific input view data and that is executable to generate a view item, and

a view composition module configured to render a plurality of view items in a virtual space, the view items being based on the view components which are bound to model parameters;

rendering at the view composition module a domain-specific composition in the virtual space based on the plurality of view items; and

detecting at a response component when a user has interacted with the displayed view composition to change the domain-specific data in order to determine if and how to use the pipeline to adjust the view composition in response to the user interaction.

2. A method in accordance with claim 1, wherein at least one of said visual items is an animation.

3. A method in accordance with claim 2, wherein the visual animation item includes a plurality of input animation parameters that may each be designated as variable for purposes of animation.

4. A method in accordance with claim 3, wherein one of the input animation parameters is time such that the animation outputs a visualization that varies over a time variable.

5. A method in accordance with claim 3, wherein one of the input animation parameters is not a time variable such that the animation outputs a visualization that varies over some variable other than time.

6. A method in accordance with claim 2, wherein the visual animation item may also include a control that allows the animation to be stopped midstream.

7. A method in accordance with claim 6, wherein the visual animation may also allow an input parameter of the visual animation item to be altered prior to continuing the animation.

8. A method in accordance with claim 1, wherein the identity of the model parameters, and the analytical relationships between the model parameters may be declaratively defined.

9. A method in accordance with claim 1, further comprising:

an act of determining that the user interaction does not require regeneration of the displayed view composition.

10. A method in accordance with claim 1, further comprising:

an act of determining that the user interaction requires regeneration of the displayed view composition; and

an act of regenerating the view in response to the user interaction.

11. A method in accordance with claim 10, wherein the act of regenerating the view comprises:

an act of identifying that one of the model parameters that was previously known is now unknown as a result of the user interaction;

an act of solving for the newly unknown model parameter;

an act of binding the newly solved-for model parameters as an input parameter to the one or more view components; and

an act of regenerating the view of visual items corresponding to the view components using the newly-bound parameter value(s).

12. A method in accordance with claim 11, wherein the identity of known and unknown model parameters may change from one solve iteration to the next.

13. A method in accordance with claim 12, wherein the act of solving for one or more model parameters that remains an unknown comprises:

an act of coordinating the solving operations of multiple heterogenic solvers.

14. A method in accordance with claim 1, wherein the plurality of canonicalization components include a default canonicalization component, the default canonicalization component configured to processes the input data when the input data does not have a corresponding canonicalization component, including:

applying a set of rules which attempt to canonicalize the input data; and

when the set of rules cannot canonicalize the input data, performing one or more of;

prompting the user to provide a schema definition for the input data which is used to transform the input data into canonical form, or

presenting a schema definition assistant for defining a new schema definition for the input data.

15. One or more computer storage devices containing stored computer-executable instruction(s) that, when executed by one or more processors of a computing system, cause the computing system to run a composition framework that is adapted at runtime to any of a diverse variety of domain specific environments by altering data rather than recoding the composition framework to adapt to a given type of domain, the composition framework generating a user interactive composite view of visual items, and wherein the composition framework comprises:

a model importation component for importing an analytical model for performing model analytics, the analytical model including model parameters and analytical relationships among the model parameters;

an authoring component for formulating and/or selecting domain-specific data for a particular domain environment, the domain-specific data comprising;

input data that defines data fields which provide values to the analytical model,

analytics data that defines bindings between the data fields and the model parameters, and

view data that defines how results of performing model analytics on the input data using the analytical model are to be visualized in a view composition;

a pipeline which receives from the authoring component the domain-specific data for the particular domain environment, and wherein the pipeline comprises;

a data portion, which is comprised of;

a data access component for receiving the domain-specific input data from the authoring component, and

a plurality of data canonicalization components for placing the input data into a canonical form that is consistent with schemas understood by an analytics portion to the extent the input data in not already in canonical form when input to the data access component and which provide canonical data to the analytics portion;

the analytics portion, which is comprised of;

a data-model binder that binds data fields from the canonical data received from the data portion to one or more of the model parameters, as defined by the domain-specific analytics data, and

a modeling component that performs model analytics on the imported analytical model, including (i) defining the analytical relationships between the one or more model parameters, the analytical relationships being categorized into one or more of equations, rules and constraints, and (ii) solving for output model variables; and

a view portion, which is comprised of;

a model view binder that binds model parameters received from the analytics portion to one or more view components stored in a view components repository, each view component having associated logic defined by domain-specific input view data and that is executable to generate a view item, and

a view composition module configured to render a domain-specific view composition based on a plurality of view items in a virtual space, the view items being based on the view components which are bound to model parameters; and

a response component that detects when a user has interacted with the displayed view composition to change the domain-specific data in order to determine if and how to use the pipeline to adjust the view composition in response to the user interaction.

16. One or more computer storage devices in accordance with claim 15, wherein the modeling component also makes known model parameters and previously unknown but solved for model parameters available to the model view binder for binding to one or more view components.

17. One or more computer storage devices in accordance with claim 16, wherein the modeling component is configured to solve for the unknown model parameters wherein even within a single model, the unknown model parameters may change from one solve operation to the next.

18. One or more computer storage devices in accordance with claim 16, wherein the analytical relationships may be defined using symbols that may apply to multiple data types of the model parameters.

19. One or more computer storage devices having stored thereon one or more computer-executable instruction(s) that, when executed by one or more processors of the computing system, cause the computing system to generate a user interactive composite view of visual items using a composition framework that is adapted at runtime to any of a diverse variety of domain specific environments by altering data rather than recoding the composition framework to adapt to a given type of domain, using the following plurality of components:

a model importation component for importing an analytical model for performing model analytics, the analytical model including model parameters and analytical relationships between the model parameters;

an authoring component for formulating and/or selecting domain-specific data for a particular domain environment, the domain-specific data comprising;

input data that defines data fields which provide values to the analytical model,

analytics data that defines bindings between the data fields and the model parameters, and

view data that defines how results of performing model analytics on the input data using the analytical model are to be visualized in the composite view of visual items;

a pipeline for receiving from the authoring component the domain-specific data for the particular domain environment, and wherein the pipeline comprises;

a data access component configured to access heterogenic data that drives construction of the composite view of visual items;

a data canonicalization component that is configured to present the heterogenic input data in a canonicalized format that is consistent with schemas understood by a modeling component;

a data-model binding component configured to bind portions of the canonicalized data from the data canonicalization component to one or more corresponding model parameters according to the analytics data;

a modeling component that performs model analytics based on the imported analytical model, including

     1) defining the analytical relationships between the plurality of model parameters,

     2) identifying which of the plurality of model parameters are known and which are unknown,

     3) solving for the unknown model parameter(s) that are identified as being unknown, and

     4) making the known model parameters and the previously unknown but solved for model parameters available to a model-visual binding component for binding to one or more view components;

a view components repository containing a plurality of heterogenic view components, each corresponding to a visual item that may be displayed;

a model-visual binding component configured to bind the plurality of model parameter values to at least one or more of the view components contained within the view components repository in accordance with the view data; and

a view composition module configured to formulate instructions for rendering a view that contains at least some of the visual items corresponding to the plurality of heterogenic view components, wherein for at least some of the visual items that are to be rendered in the view, view component logic associated with the corresponding view component dictates the manner in which the rendering of the visual item occurs such that the rendering is dependent upon one or more parameters of the corresponding view component; and

a response component that detects when a user has interacted with the displayed view to change the domain-specific data and determines if and how to use the pipeline to adjust the displayed view in response to the user interaction.

20. One or more computer storage devices in accordance with claim 19, wherein the computer-executable instruction(s) are further structured such that, when executed by the one or more processors of the computing system, the computing system regenerates the composite view of visual items in response to user manipulation of the composite view of visual items.