Interactive synchronization of web data and spreadsheets

• US 9,489,366 B2
• Filed: 02/19/2010
• Issued: 11/08/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 02/19/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Scott, Matthew Robert, Zhang, Ruochi, Song, Ruihua, Wen, Ji-Rong
• Primary Examiner(s): HUYNH, THU V
• Application Number:
  US12/709,267
• Publication Number:
  US 20110209048A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,454 Days
• Field of Search: 715/236, 715/212, 715/213, 715/255, 715/209
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/95 Retrieval from the web
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/177 of tables; using ruled lines
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/18 of spreadsheets form-filling G06F40/174

Abstract

Interactive synchronization of Web data and spreadsheets is usable to build data wrappers based on any type of data found in a document. Such data wrappers can be used to interact with source documents, crawl a network for additional data, map data from across domains, and/or synchronize data from dynamic Web documents.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method of wrapper induction comprising:

building a wrapper to synchronize data with a spreadsheet application, the building comprising;

displaying a source document;

receiving, using the source document, a selection for a first set of data from the source document, the first set of data to be imported into a spreadsheet document generated by the spreadsheet application;

providing a graphical indication on the source document of a recommendation of additional data from the source document to be selected for importing into the spreadsheet document, the additional data being associated with the first set of data;

determining characteristics of the first set of data selected from the source document and the additional data, wherein the characteristics are used to identify at least a second set of data in the source document or other documents, the second set of data including the characteristics of the first set of data selected from the source document and the additional data;

importing the first set of data from the source document into the spreadsheet document; and

storing the wrapper in the spreadsheet document.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

selecting automatically, based at least in part on the characteristics of the first set of data and the additional data, the second set of data from the source document;

extracting the second set of data from the source document; and

importing the second set of data from the source document into the spreadsheet document.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising training the wrapper to determine appropriate data to be extracted from at least a second source document based at least in part on the first set of data and the second set of data, the source document and the second source document comprising documents available over a network.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the source document and the second source document comprise documents available over the network that belong to different domains.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

building a second wrapper from data of a second source document, the source document and the second source document comprising documents available over a network from different domains; and

mapping the wrapper and the second wrapper to create a cross-domain wrapper.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising displaying a user interface, the user interface configured to receive instructions for at least one of:

storing the wrapper in a computer-readable medium;

storing a copy of the wrapper in the computer-readable medium;

or

naming the wrapper or the copy of the wrapper.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the storing the wrapper in the spreadsheet document comprises encoding the wrapper using Extensible Markup Language (XML).

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising providing a graphical indication on the spreadsheet document that represents a location on the spreadsheet document corresponding to data of the first set of data imported from the source document when a cursor is located over a location of the data in the source document.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising providing a graphical label on the spreadsheet document that represents a type of data corresponding to a type of data imported from the source document.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the building of the wrapper further comprises defining a data template of the first set of data imported into the spreadsheet document, the defining comprising:

receiving a description of a data type that corresponds to data of the first set of data imported from the source document, wherein the data type comprises at least one of an image file, a degree of measurement, a plain text file, a hyperlink, a temperature, or a percentage; and

storing the description of the data type in the data template.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving the characteristics of the first set of data comprises automatically determining a data type corresponding to the first set of data selected from the source document.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the building of the wrapper further comprises providing a spreadsheet selector that displays how the first set of data will be imported into the spreadsheet document.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving, using the source document, a selection of the additional data, the additional data to be imported into the spreadsheet document.

14. A system comprising:

memory coupled to a processor; and

a wrapper training module, stored in the memory and executable on the processor, to;

receive a wrapper configured to synchronize data with a spreadsheet application, the wrapper comprising a first set of data selected and extracted from a first document available over a network;

provide a graphical indication on the first document of a recommendation of additional data from the first document to be selected for importing into the spreadsheet application, the additional data being associated with the first set of data;

determine characteristics of the first set of data selected and extracted from the first document and the additional data;

based at least in part on the characteristics of the first set of data selected and extracted from the first document and the additional data, determine appropriate data to be extracted from one or more other documents available over the network using the wrapper, wherein the appropriate data includes the characteristics of the first set of data selected and extracted from the first document and the additional data;

extract the appropriate data from the one or more other documents; and

store the appropriate data in a spreadsheet document associated with the spreadsheet application.

15. The system of claim 14, further comprising a wrapper storing module, stored in the memory and executable on the processor, to store the wrapper in the spreadsheet document.

16. The system of claim 14, further comprising a user interface module, stored in the memory and executable on the processor, to display a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) for an additional document of the one or more other documents available over the network, wherein the additional document is associated with at least part of the appropriate data stored in the spreadsheet document.

17. The system of claim 14, further comprising a user interface module, stored in the memory and executable on the processor, to display at least one of:

data editing options for editing the appropriate data prior to storing the appropriate data in the spreadsheet document;

or

wrapper editing options for editing the wrapper after the appropriate data has been stored in the spreadsheet document.

18. The system of claim 14, further comprising a network crawling module, stored in the memory and executable on the processor, to:

crawl additional documents on the network;

search at least one additional document of the additional documents; and

employ the wrapper training module to import additional data from the at least one additional document to the spreadsheet document, wherein the additional data is related to the data and the appropriate data.

19. The system of claim 14, further comprising:

a wrapper mapping module, stored in the memory and executable on the processor, to;

receive another wrapper created based at least in part on data from a second document available on the network, the first document and the second document comprising different markup language structures; and

map the data from the wrapper to the data from the another wrapper to create a cross-domain wrapper.

20. A system comprising:

a processor; and

one or more memories, storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed on the processor, perform acts comprising;

receiving data wrappers configured to synchronize data with a spreadsheet application, a first data wrapper created from data of a first source document and a second data wrapper created from data of a second source document, the first source document and the second source document belonging to different domains; and

mapping the first data wrapper and the second data wrapper together to create a cross-domain wrapper, wherein the mapping includes;

determining, from the first data wrapper, a first source location descriptor that identifies a location of a first data item in the first source document;

determining, from the second data wrapper, a second source location descriptor that identifies a location of a second data item in the second source document; and

associating the first source location descriptor with the second location descriptor by matching the first source location descriptor from the first data wrapper with the second source location descriptor from the second data wrapper such that data associated with the first data item from the first source document and data associated with the second data item from the second source document can be imported using the cross-domain wrapper.