Building Computing Applications Based Upon Metadata

• US 20070266384A1
• Filed: 03/27/2007
• Published: 11/15/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 03/27/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Fujitsu Limited
• Original Assignee: Fujitsu Limited
• Inventors: Song, Zhexuan, Masuoka, Ryusuke, Labrou, Yannis, Huang, Guang
• Granted Patent: US 8,972,872 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 718/100
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/00 Arrangements for software engineering testing or debugging G06F11/36; administrative, planning or organisation aspects of software project management G06Q10/06

Abstract

Associating a semantic service description (SSD) with a service, wherein the SSD comprises a semantic description of the service, including a semantic description of a parameter of the service, according to a computer interpretable language, and, as a service grounding, a mapping between the computer interpretable language expressing the SSD and an interface, including an interface parameter, of the service. A dynamic composition of a task based upon a user selection of a plurality of known services is supported and a dynamic association of the task with a user interface of an application is supported, based upon associating the task with the user selection of a UI object, a UI display screen, and a UI event for the application.

Claims

1. An apparatus providing a plurality of computing sources of functionality, each computing source of functionality presenting a service and existing in a computing environment of the apparatus, a computing environment in network communication with the apparatus, or any combinations thereof, the apparatus comprising:

a controller

associating a semantic service description (SSD) with the service, wherein the SSD comprises a semantic description of the service, including a semantic description of a parameter of the service, according to a computer interpretable language, and, as a service grounding, a mapping between the computer interpretable language expressing the SSD and an interface, including an interface parameter, of the service;

dynamically discovering one or more SSDs as known services through a plurality of discovery mechanisms discovering the SSDs;

supporting dynamic composition of a task based upon a user selection of a plurality of the known services; and

supporting dynamic association of the task with a user interface (UI) of an application, based upon associating the task with the user selection of a UI object, a UI display screen, and a UI event for the application.

2. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the dynamic association of the task with the application user interface comprises generating a matrix of the UI object, the UI display screen, the UI event and the task.

3. The apparatus according to claim 2, wherein the matrix comprises identifiers corresponding to the UI object, the UI display screen, the UI event and the task.

4. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the supporting of the dynamic association of the task with the application user interface comprises:

associating metadata with each UI object,

presenting to the user selectable UI objects based upon the metadata,

upon selection of one of the UI objects, presenting to the user selectable UI display screens in which the selected UI object appears,

upon selection of one of the UI display screens presenting to the user selectable Ul events for the selected UI object in the selected UI display screen, and

upon selection of one of the UI events, presenting to the user selectable tasks for associating with the selected UI event, based upon inputs and/or outputs of tasks and inputs and/or outputs of the selected UI event.

5. The apparatus according to claim 4, wherein the UI objects, the UI display screens and the UI events are determined according to queries, output of queries or both specifying the UI objects of the application.

6. The apparatus according to claim 5, wherein the metadata is based upon an ontology.

7. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the dynamic composition of the task comprises continuously updating services available for the task during the composition of the task and automatically linking a selected service to the task during the composition of the task, based upon the semantic description in each SSD associated with each service

8. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the controller further searches for a task based upon a user query against all possible tasks.

9. The apparatus according to claim 8, wherein the task is searched by:

searching the known services for a set of matched services based upon the query,

determining a set of all possible tasks based upon the known services,

searching for the task in the set of all possible tasks based upon the set of matched services.

10. The apparatus according to claim 9, wherein the searching of the known services for the set of matched services comprises comparing the query with one or more attributes in the SSDs corresponding to the known services, the attributes including one or more of service label, service name, service description, input, or output, or any combinations thereof.

11. The apparatus according to claim 10, wherein each SSD attribute is given a weight, and the set of matched services is according to the SSD attribute weights.

12. The apparatus according to claim 9, wherein the searching for the task in the set of all possible tasks based upon the set of matched services comprises computing a weight for the task and ranking a plurality of searched tasks based upon respective task weights.

13. The apparatus according to claim 12, wherein the task weight is based upon execution history of the task by the user.

14. The apparatus according to claim 8, wherein the controller searches for a plurality of tasks and the plurality of searched tasks are grouped by similarity of services among the tasks.

15. A method of associating a user interface action for an application with a task based upon a plurality of computing sources of functionality, each computing source of functionality presenting a service and existing in a computing environment of the apparatus, a computing environment in network communication with the apparatus, or any combinations thereof, comprising:

associating a semantic service description (SSD) with the service, wherein the SSD comprises a semantic description of the service, including a semantic description of a parameter of the service, according to a computer interpretable language, and, as a service grounding, a mapping between the computer interpretable language expressing the SSD and an interface, including an interface parameter, of the service;

dynamically discovering one or more SSDs as known services through a plurality of discovery mechanisms discovering the SSDs;

supporting dynamic composition of a task based upon a user selection of a plurality of the known services; and

supporting dynamic association of the task with a user interface (UI) of an application, based upon associating the task with the user selection of a UI object, a UI display screen, and a UI event for the application.