Extensibility for web based diagram visualization

• US 8,954,488 B2
• Filed: 01/21/2009
• Issued: 02/10/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 01/21/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Mathew, Abraham, Cicos, Emil, Loganathan, Raveendrnathan, Arida, Philippe-Joseph
• Primary Examiner(s): LEE, BRYAN Y
• Application Number:
  US12/357,243
• Publication Number:
  US 20100185928A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,211 Days
• Field of Search: 709/203
• US Class Current: 709/203
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9577 Optimising the visualization of content, e.g. distillation of HTML documents

Abstract

Extensible architecture and data flow in a web based diagram visualization service is accomplished by enabling a diagram update engine to launch custom data modules. Data modules for data sources that are not inherently supported are created by third parties through a specially defined interface (e.g. .NET® assemblies) and made visible for the web based diagram services and callable from a diagram update engine. Thus, a number of data sources from which diagram data can be retrieved and the way incoming data is manipulated and aggregated is extensible through code.

Claims

1. A method to be executed at least in part in a computing device for extensible web based diagram visualization services, the method comprising:

in response to receiving a request for a diagram including references to external data sources, providing the request to an update engine for determination of supported data sources and custom data modules for retrieval from non-supported data sources implementing a predefined abstract class;

receiving a custom data module identifier from the update engine;

invoking the custom data module indicated by the identifier through the predefined abstract class;

receiving one of data and exception from the custom data module;

if data is received, forwarding the data to the update engine;

if an exception is received from the custom data module, providing an exception message to the client application; and

mediating presentation of the requested diagram at a client application by a rendering the diagram with updated attributes of elements received from supported and non-supported data sources that are polled at render time based on the forwarded data from the update engine.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the update engine is configured to perform updates on data from the supported data sources and defer to a corresponding custom data module for data from non-supported data sources.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the data is associated with at least one from a set of:

a shape, a size, a position, and an attribute of an element in the requested diagram.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

upon determining all custom data modules, initiating parallel and asynchronous queries on each custom data module.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein a network identifier of requesting client application and additional connection and query information is passed to each custom data module as parameters.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein each custom data module is configured to retrieve, generate, and aggregate data and return employing callbacks.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the data is returned in a serialized data set object.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

parsing and extracting visual definitions for diagram elements connected to external data;

re-evaluating publish-time formulas for each attribute of the diagram elements with references to the external data; and

rendering the diagram.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the diagram, is rendered in one of:

vector format and raster format.

10. A computer system for executing a diagram service for extensible web based diagram visualization, the computer system comprising:

a web front end (WFE) server that includes a memory and a processor coupled to the memory, the processor configured to;

in response to receiving a request for a diagram from a browser including a reference to an external data source implementing a predefined abstract class, forward the request to an update engine;

receive a connection string referring to a custom data module from the update engine;

invoke the custom data module for retrieval, generation, and aggregation of data through the predefined abstract class from the external data source;

receive data in a predefined format from the custom data module;

forward the received data to the update engine;

receive rendered diagram from the update engine with updated attributes of elements received from supported and non-supported data sources that are polled at render time; and

provide the rendered diagram to the browser; and

a backend server that includes a memory and a processor coupled to the memory, the processor configured to execute the update engine, wherein the backend engine is arranged to;

for each diagram element with a reference to a supported external data source, return a connection string for the supported data source to the WFE;

for each diagram element with a reference to a non-supported external data source determine a connection string for a custom data module; and

if a custom data module is found, return the connection string for the custom data module to the WFE;

else

return an error code to the WFE.

11. The computer system of claim 10, wherein the connection string for the custom data module includes a name of the custom data module, a class for implementing the custom data module class, and additional connection and query information in a predefined format.

12. The computer system of claim 10, wherein the update engine is further arranged to return a query string to be executed against the supported data source and a schema definition for data expected to be returned from the supported data source.

13. The computer system of claim 12, wherein the update engine is further arranged to connect to the supported data source, retrieve the data by executing a query defined by the query string, and validate the data against the schema.

14. The computer system of claim 13, wherein each custom data module is configured to retrieve and aggregate data through a system of callbacks from the WFE, and return the data to the WFE.

15. The computer system of claim 10, wherein the processor of the WFE is further configured to return a failure message to the browser if a custom data module referenced by the requested diagram fails to return data.

16. A non-signal computer-readable storage medium with instructions stored thereon for extensible web based diagram visualization services, the instructions comprising:

receiving a request for a diagram including references to external data sources;

for references to supported data sources;

determining the referenced data source;

connecting to the referenced data source;

retrieving data by executing a query; and

validating the retrieved data;

for references to non-supported data sources;

determining custom data modules for data from referenced non-supported data sources implementing a predefined abstract class;

invoking the determined custom data modules by passing a network context of a requesting client application and connection/query information to the custom data modules through the predefined abstract class; and

receiving data from the custom data modules;

parsing and extracting visual definitions for data-connected diagram elements with updated attributes of the diagram elements received from supported and non-supported data sources that are polled at render time, wherein dynamic relationships between the diagrams elements of the diagram determine attributes of individual shapes and connectors;

computing publish-time formulas for the diagram elements;

rendering the requested diagram based on the updated publish-time formulas in one of a vector and raster format depending on a type of request from the client application; and

providing the rendered diagram to the requesting client application.

17. The non-signal computer-readable medium of claim 16, wherein the custom data modules are further configured to authenticate a requestor based on the network context.

18. The non-signal computer-readable medium of claim 16, wherein the instructions further comprise invoking the custom data modules and receiving data through one of:

parallel and asynchronous callbacks.

19. The non-signal computer-readable medium of claim 16, wherein the requested diagram is rendered based on received data from supported and non-supported data sources at a backend server and the rendered diagram provided to the requesting client application by a web front end server.