Declarative computer programming language method and system

• US 20050203958A1
• Filed: 03/15/2005
• Published: 09/15/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 03/15/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: III Holdings 3, LLC
• Original Assignee: Canyonbridge, Inc. (Bungee Labs, Inc.)
• Inventors: Mitchell, David C., Mitchell, Bruce P., Mitchell, Dale K., Hamilton, Scott E.
• Granted Patent: US 7,836,428 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/315 Object-oriented languages
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4492 Inheritance

Abstract

A method and system for instructing a computer in a system of a declarative computer programming language. Unlike traditional declarative languages, the programming language may be neither relational nor functional, neither procedural nor imperative. The declarative programming elements may be defined as a meta-description of logic and data. The basic morphology of this meta-description may be a data construct known as a Lattice. Lattices derive declarative power from their inclusion of “Attributes” and “Sites”. Attributes are declarative properties that determine the internal behavior of a Lattice; while Sites are declarative data access points that establish the external relationship a Lattice may have with other Lattices, Lattice Containers, and Lattice Elements. Each of these data constructs are highly adaptable, recursive, and expandable, providing the entire language with a degree of flexibility that facilitates a very high level of abstraction.

Claims

1. A computer program product comprising:

a computer readable medium having embedded therein computer readable program code embodying an application comprising one or more declarative programming structures, each respective declarative programming structure having a plurality of configurable constructs comprising;

one or more attributes configurable to select an internal behavior of said respective declarative programming structure; and

one or more sites configurable to define respective data access points for programming structures external to said respective declarative programming structure.

2. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein said one or more sites define said respective data access points for programming structures internal to said respective declarative programming structure.

3. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein said one or more sites are extensible.

4. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein each respective declarative programming structure further comprises one or more logic elements providing a plurality of available behaviors selectable by said one or more attributes.

5. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein said declarative programming structures comprise a container structure having one or more declarative programming elements nested therein, wherein said container structure is configured to execute said one or more programming elements within a container context.

6. The computer program product of claim 5, wherein said container structure comprises one or more variables accessible within said container context.

7. The computer program product of claim 6, wherein said one or more programming elements comprise one or more nested container structures.

8. The computer program product of claim 6, wherein said one or more programming elements comprise a declarative programming primitive.

9. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein said one or more declarative programming structures comprises an assignment structure comprising a first site and a second site associated with an assignment operator.

10. The computer program product of claim 9, wherein said assignment structure further comprises a configurable copy attribute to select from an assignment by reference and an assignment by copy.

11. The computer program product of claim 10, wherein said assignment by copy comprises an assignment by reference to a complex data structure with a copy of a top level object of said complex data structure.

12. The computer program product of claim 10, wherein said assignment by copy comprises an assignment of a recursive copy of designated data of a complex data type.

13. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein said one or more declarative programming structures comprises a call function structure having one or more sites which act as input/output parameters.

14. The computer program product of claim 13, wherein said call function structure is called by non-declarative program code.

15. The computer program product of claim 13, wherein said call function structure is called by one of said one or more declarative programming structures.

16. The computer program product of claim 13, wherein said call function structure comprises a call to a non-declarative function.

17. The computer program product of claim 16, wherein said call to said non-declarative function comprises a call to an underlying system.

18. The computer program product of claim 16, wherein said call to said non-declarative function comprises a call to legacy program code.

19. The computer program product of claim 16, wherein said call to said non-declarative function comprises a call to an external procedure.

20. The computer program product of claim 19, wherein said external procedure is external to a computer system in which said computer readable program code is executed.

21. The computer program product of claim 1:

wherein said one or more declarative programming structures comprise a conditional structure having one or more conditional elements, each of said one or more conditional elements comprising a conditional expression and an associated container structure having one or more programming elements nested therein;

wherein said conditional structure is configured to execute said associated container structure when said conditional expression is true.

22. The computer program product of claim 21, wherein said conditional structure comprises a default behavior configured to execute when no conditional expression is true.

23. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein said one or more declarative programming structures comprises a dialog structure configured to generate a dialog interface.

24. The computer program product of claim 23, wherein said dialog structure implements a halt in execution of said one or more declarative programming structures.

25. The computer program product of claim 24, wherein said dialog structure is associated with logic code for resuming said execution of said one or more declarative programming structures.

26. The computer program product of claim 24, wherein said dialog structure is associated with computer code for tracking a data state related to said one or more declarative programming structures during said halt in said execution.

27. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein said one or more declarative programming structures comprises an iterator structure configurable to execute a contained declarative programming structure a plurality of times.

28. The computer program product of claim 27, wherein one of said attributes associated with said iterator structure comprises a value corresponding to a length of a collection.

29. The computer program product of claim 27, wherein said iterator structure comprises one of said sites configurable to provide access to a collection of data.

30. The computer program product of claim 27, wherein said iterator structure comprises an expression that determines an iterative behavior of said iterator structure.

31. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein said one or more declarative program structures are extensible.

32. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein said one or more declarative programming structures comprises a message structure configurable to cause a message box to be displayed.

33. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein said one or more declarative programming structures comprises a message structure configurable to log output.

34. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein said one or more declarative programming structures comprises an exception structure configurable to detect an exception condition and throw an exception for processing by another declarative programming structure.

35. The computer program product of claim 34, further comprising one or more exception handlers nested within a hierarchy of declarative container structures, wherein one or more of said container structures are configured to pass said exception and an associated execution context state to a next higher container context in said hierarchy.

36. The computer program product of claim 35, wherein said one or more exception handlers are configured to throw into said associated execution state to resume execution.

37. The computer program product of claim 35, further comprising a function structure, wherein said function structure is configured to propagate said exception back to a declarative call function structure providing a current calling context for said function structure.

38. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein said one or more declarative programming structures comprises a sorting structure configurable to sort a collection of data, wherein one or more of said attributes determine a sort behavior from a plurality of available sort behaviors, and wherein one of said sites is configurable to access said collection of data.

39. The computer program product of claim 1, configured to execute on an underlying system that supports said plurality of declarative programming structures during runtime.

40. The computer program product of claim 1, further comprising a plurality of declarative meta-structures corresponding respectively to a plurality of declarative programming structure types, wherein said plurality of declarative meta-structures support one or more factory methods for generating runtime instances of said declarative programming structure types.

41. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein said one or more attributes comprise an attribute primitive.

42. The computer program product of claim 41, wherein said attribute primitive comprises an attribute primitive type from the set of primitive types including:

string;

binary blobs;

numeric;

date;

time;

date and time;

enumerated;

Boolean; and

integer.

43. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein said one or more attributes comprises an attribute object.

44. The computer program product of claim 43, wherein said attribute object comprises an attribute container having one or more additional attributes nested therein.

45. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein one or more of said attributes are recursive.

46. The computer program product of claim 1, wherein one or more of said attributes comprises one or more attribute sites.

47. A method for programming a declarative language program using a computer programming interface, comprising:

providing a library of declarative programming elements comprising predefined programming structures having one or more configurable meta data properties from the set of properties comprising attributes and sites;

obtaining a container programming structure;

selecting a logical behavior associated with said container programming structure by setting one or more attributes of said container programming structure;

nesting one or more declarative programming elements within said container programming structure for sequential execution within a context of said container programming structure;

selecting a structure type for one or more of said declarative programming elements, said structure type determining a range of logical behaviors available to a respective declarative programming structure;

selecting respective logical behaviors of said one or more declarative programming elements by setting one or more attributes of said one or more declarative programming elements.

48. The method of claim 47 further comprising selecting an access behavior for one or more sites on one or more of said declarative programming elements by setting one or more associated site attributes.

49. The method of claim 48, wherein at least one of said one or more declarative programming structures comprises a second container programming structure, said method further comprising:

nesting one or more additional declarative programming elements within said second container programming structure for sequential execution within a context of said second container programming structure.

50. The method of claim 49, further comprising:

configuring one of said one or more additional declarative programming elements to support interrupting and resuming said sequential execution.

51. The method of claim 48 further comprising associating said one or more sites with one or more variables in said context of said container programming structure.

52. The method of claim 47, wherein said computer programming interface is a graphical user interface (GUI), said method further comprising:

providing a graphical representation of said container programming structure;

providing graphical selection elements associated with said one or more attributes of said container programming element and with said one or more attributes of said one or more declarative programming elements; and

presenting graphical representations of said one or more declarative programming elements within a visual border of said container programming structure.

53. The method of claim 52, further comprising:

providing one or more type selection elements associated with each of said one or more declarative programming elements.

54. The method of claim 47, wherein said computer programming interface comprises a textual interface, said method further comprising:

providing a textual representation of said container programming structure;

expressing said one or more attributes of said container programming structure in association with said textual representation of said container programming structure;

providing one or more textual representations of respective declarative programming elements; and

expressing said one or more attributes of said one or more declarative programming elements in association with the respective textual representation of the respective declarative programming element.

55. The method of claim 54, wherein said textual representations are presented in a computer language grammar.

56. The method of claim 47, further comprising:

instantiating a meta-data container object associated with said container programming structure;

wherein setting said one or more attributes of said container programming structure comprises setting one or more respective data values within said meta-data container object.

57. The method of claim 56, further comprising:

calling a factory method of said meta-data container object to obtain a container object implementing said container programming element.

58. The method of claim 56, further comprising:

said meta-data container object implementing said container programming element during execution of said declarative language program.

59. The method of claim 47, further comprising:

obtaining a new declarative programming element type.

60. The method of claim 59, wherein obtaining a new declarative programming element type comprises:

extending an existing declarative programming element type.

61. The method of claim 59, wherein obtaining a new declarative programming element type comprises:

defining a new logical behavior; and

associating one or more declarative properties with said new logical behavior.

62. The method of claim 61, wherein associating one or more declarative properties comprises:

defining one or more data points associated with said new logical behavior; and

assigning one or more sites to said data points.

63. The method of claim 61, wherein associating one or more declarative properties comprises:

defining one or more control points for said new logical behavior; and

assigning one or more attributes to said one or more control points.

64. The method of claim 47, wherein said declarative programming elements represent a fifth generation programming language (5GL).

65. The method of claim 47, wherein said one or more of said declarative programming elements are nested to implement a logic flow that captures one or more programming constructs from one or more third generation languages (3GLs) and one or more fourth generation languages (4GLs).

66. The method of claim 47, further comprising:

for one or more of said attributes and said sites, predefining a finite range of valid values that are consistent with runtime execution, such that a language grammar of said declarative programming elements is self-validating.

67. The method of claim 47, further comprising:

setting one or more runtime validation attributes on one or more of said declarative programming elements to throw an exception if an invalid assignment occurs at runtime.

68. The method of claim 47, further comprising:

said one or more declarative programming elements transforming into an executable construct.