Database integrated viewer

• US 8,732,146 B2
• Filed: 02/01/2010
• Issued: 05/20/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 02/01/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Roberts, Scott M., Jayadevan, Siddharth, Box, Donald F., Mollicone, Laurent, Flynn, James R.
• Primary Examiner(s): Pham, Hung Q
• Application Number:
  US12/698,038
• Publication Number:
  US 20110191384A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,569 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 707/705
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/248 Presentation of query results
• 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 7/00 Methods or arrangements for processing data by operating upon the order or content of the data handled logic circuits H03K19/00

Abstract

A database integration viewer that allows additional properties to be associated with a record as viewed in a single record or table, even though those additional properties are not owned by the record in the underlying source record or table in the database. Using this integration view, a viewed version of record or table may be different than the actual structure of the source record or table. In the viewed version of the record or table, the viewed record or table or may include some or all of the properties for the records of the subject record or table, while incorporating one or more additional properties for the record into the viewed table. The properties may be scalars, or may be computed to populate the viewed version of the record or table.

Claims

1. A computer program product comprising one or more physical computer-readable storage devices having thereon computer-executable instructions that, when executed by one or more processors of the computing system, cause the computing system to instantiate a database integration viewer, the database integration viewer configured to formulate a view table that is a view of a database table, the database table being one of one or more tables within a database, by performing the following:

instantiating a database view including the view table;

for each of a plurality of properties of the database table, an act of populating a corresponding property in the view table using the corresponding property of the database table;

for a first property of the view table, computing a value for the first property using at least one value which is obtained external to the database;

for a second property of the view table, computing a value for the second property using at least a property within the database table;

mapping each of the plurality of properties, the computed first property, and the computed second property into corresponding elements of the view table; and

displaying the view table including displaying the plurality of properties of the database table, the computed first property, and displaying the computed second property.

2. The computer program product in accordance with claim 1, further comprising displaying in the view table a plurality of properties computed from a plurality of properties within the database table.

3. The computer program product in accordance with claim 1, wherein the computed first property is an assigned scalar value.

4. The computer program product in accordance with claim 1, wherein for the computed first property, the act of computing the value for the first property is performed by performing the following:

an act of accessing an expression;

an act of evaluating the expression;

an act of assigning a result of the expression as the value of the computed first property.

5. The computer program product in accordance with claim 4, wherein the expression includes as input a reference to a property from a second database table.

6. The computer program product in accordance with claim 5, wherein the expression also includes as input a reference to a property from a third database table.

7. The computer program product in accordance with claim 4, wherein the expression is a reference to a property from a record outside the database table.

8. The computer program product in accordance with claim 4, wherein the expression is an arithmetic expression.

9. The computer program product in accordance with claim 4, wherein the result of the expression is a scalar.

10. The computer program product in accordance with claim 4, wherein the result of the expression comprises a record.

11. The computer program product in accordance with claim 4, wherein the result of the expression comprises a plurality of records.

12. The computer program product in accordance with claim 1, wherein integrated database viewer is one of a plurality of table viewers offered by the computer program product.

13. A computer program product comprising one or more physical computer-readable storage devices having thereon computer-executable instructions that, when executed by one or more processors of the computing system, cause the computing system to instantiate a database integration viewer, the database integration viewer configured to formulate a view record that is a view of a database record, the database record being one of one or more records within a database, by performing the following:

instantiating a database view including a view record;

for each of a plurality of properties of the database record, an act of populating a corresponding property in the view record using the corresponding property of the database record;

for first property of the view record, computing a value for the first property using at least one value which is obtained external to the database;

for a second property of the view record, computing a value for the second property using at least a property within the database record;

mapping each of the plurality of properties of the database record, the computed first property, and the computed second property into corresponding fields of the view record; and

displaying the view record including displaying the plurality of properties of the database record, displaying the computed first property, and displaying the computed second property.

14. The computer program product in accordance with claim 13, further comprising displaying in the view record a plurality of properties computed from a plurality of properties within the database record.

15. The computer program product in accordance with claim 13, wherein the plurality of properties of the database record comprises all of the properties of the database record.

16. The computer program product in accordance with claim 13, wherein the database record is part of a database table.

17. The computer program product in accordance with claim 13, wherein for the computed first property, computing the value for the first property is performed by performing the following:

an act of accessing an expression;

an act of evaluating the expression;

an act of assigning a result of the expression as the value of the computed first property.

18. The computer program product in accordance with claim 17, wherein the expression includes as input a reference to a property from outside of the database record.

19. The computer program product in accordance with claim 17, wherein the result of the expression comprises a plurality of records.

20. A computer-implemented method for formulating a view table that is a view of a database table, the database table being one of one or more tables within a database, the method comprising:

instantiating a database view including the view table;

for each of a plurality of properties of the database table, equating a value of a corresponding property in the view table as being the same as a value of the corresponding property of the database table;

for at least one property of the view table, computing a value for the at least one property using at least one value which is obtained external to the database, the computation following an expression associated with the at least one property of the view table, each of the at least one property of the view table corresponding to a column in the view table, wherein the act of computing the value comprises;

an act of accessing an expression;

an act of evaluating the expression;

an act of assigning a result of the expression as the value of the computed property;

for a second property of the view table, computing a value for the second property using at least a property within the database table;

mapping each of the plurality of properties, the computed first property, and the computed second property into corresponding elements of the view table; and

displaying the view table including displaying the plurality of properties of the database table, displaying the computed at least one property, and displaying the computed second property.