Correlation, Association, or Correspondence of Electronic Forms

• US 20080052287A1
• Filed: 10/31/2007
• Published: 02/28/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 08/06/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Essey, Edward, Shur, Andrey, Stanciu, Constantin, Halstead, Patrick
• Granted Patent: US 7,971,139 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/5
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/143 Markup, e.g. Standard Generalized Markup Language [SGML] or Document Type Definition [DTD]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/154 Tree transformation for tree-structured or markup documents, e.g. XSLT, XSL-FO or stylesheets
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/174 Form filling; Merging

Abstract

Determining correspondence, association, and/or correlation between nodes of electronic forms based on schemas of those forms is described. Importing, merging, and/or annotating data from one electronic form into another electronic form based on correspondence, association, and/or correlation between nodes is also described.

Claims

1. One or more computer-readable storage media comprising computer-executable instructions that perform the following acts when executed by a computer:

receiving a first schema of a first electronic form and a second schema of a second electronic form; and

determining, based on the first schema of the first electronic form and the second schema of the second electronic form, that a node of the first electronic form corresponds to a node of the second electronic form.

2. The media of claim 1, further comprising determining the first schema of the first electronic form and determining the second schema of the second electronic form.

3. The media of claim 2, wherein the act of determining the first schema includes analysis of a structure of the first electronic form.

4. The media of claim 2, wherein the act of determining the first schema includes analysis of a structure of the first electronic form and comparison of the structure with a list of schemas to determine if one of the listed schemas is capable of governing the first electronic form.

5. The media of claim 2, wherein the acts of determining the first schema of the first electronic form and determining the second schema of the second electronic form include accessing a first file associated with the first electronic form and a second file associated with the second electronic form, respectively.

6. The media of claim 2, wherein the act of determining the first schema of the first electronic form or the act of determining the second schema of the second electronic form is performed without user interaction.

7. The media of claim 1, further comprising:

determining that the node of the first electronic form includes first data;

determining that the node of the second electronic form includes second data; and

appending, based on the correspondence of the node of the first electronic form and the node of the second electronic form, the first data included within the node of the first electronic form to the second data included within the node of the second electronic form.

8. The media of claim 7, wherein the first data includes text or rich text data and the second data includes other text or rich text data.

9. The media of claim 1, wherein the act of determining that a node of the first electronic form corresponds to a node of the second electronic form comprises comparing a first schema fragment of the first schema that governs the node of the first electronic form and a second schema fragment of the second schema that governs the node of the second electronic form.

10. One or more computer-readable storage media comprising computer-executable instructions that, when executed by a computer, associate, without user interaction, a node of a first electronic form and a node of a second electronic form if a first schema of the first electronic form and a second schema of the second electronic form indicate that the two nodes are capable of association.

11. The media of claim 10, wherein the act of associate matches the node of the first electronic form with the node of the second electronic form based on a first schema fragment of the first schema that governs the node of the first electronic form and a second schema fragment of the second schema that governs the node of the second electronic form indicating that the node of the first electronic form and the node of the second electronic form are capable of association.

12. The media of claim 10, wherein the act of associate associates a plurality of nodes of the first electronic form with a plurality of nodes of the second electronic form.

13. The media of claim 10, further comprising:

append, without user interaction and based on the association between the nodes, first data included within the node of the first electronic form to second data included in the node of the second electronic form.

14. The media of claim 13, wherein the act of append includes merging attributes of the node of the first electronic form with the node of the second electronic form if a schema fragment governing the node of the second electronic form contains one or more child nodes but does not allow additional child nodes.

15. A method implemented at least in part by a computer comprising:

determining a correlation between a first node of a first electronic form and a node of a plurality of nodes of a second electronic form based on an annotation to the first node of the first electronic form, the annotation indicating that a first schema fragment governing the first node and a second schema fragment governing the node of the plurality of nodes of the second electronic form indicate that the first node and the node of the plurality of nodes are capable of association; and

providing this correlation between the first node of the first electronic form and the node of the plurality of nodes of the second electronic form effective to enable importation of data between the first node of the first electronic form and the node of the plurality of nodes of the second electronic form.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising, prior to the act of determining, applying a transformation file on the first electronic form to add the annotation to the first node.

17. The method of claim 15, wherein the annotation includes instructions regarding how to make data in the first node of the first electronic form compatible with the second schema fragment governing the node of the plurality of nodes of the second electronic form.

18. The method of claim 15, further comprising, responsive to the act of providing, importing the data from the first node of the first electronic form into the node of the plurality of nodes of the second electronic form.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein the act of importing includes merging the data of the first node of the first electronic form into the node of the plurality of nodes of the second electronic form if a parent node of the node of the plurality of nodes of the second electronic form is bounded to one occurrence of data.

20. The method of claim 18, wherein the act of importing includes adding the data of the first node of the first electronic form as a child node to the node of the plurality of nodes of the second electronic form if the second schema fragment allows additional child nodes.