GENERIC XAD PROCESSING MODEL

• US 20090204944A1
• Filed: 02/08/2008
• Published: 08/13/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 02/08/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Cran, Simeon J., Hackmann, Christopher D., Szyperski, Clemens A., Kent, Simon David, Jayadevan, Siddharth, Williams, Antony Scott, Aitken, William Emeric, Hristov, Vladimir Nedkov
• Granted Patent: US 8,201,147 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/121
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/65 Updates security arrangements therefor G06F21/57
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/71 Version control security arrangements therefor G06F21/57; Configuration management

Abstract

Embodiments are directed to dynamically building software applications and dynamically updating software applications based on changed data values. In one embodiment, a computer system receives an indication that a software application is to be initiated. The computer system also receives an application description including tags describing software objects that are to be included in the software application, automatically maps portions of the application description identified by the tags to software objects using reflection, where the reflecting includes accessing properties associated with the software objects, and automatically binds properties of the software objects to the portions of the application description based declarative rules included in the software object properties associated with the software object.

Claims

1. At a computer system, a method for dynamically building a software application, the method comprising:

an act of receiving an indication that a software application is to be initiated;

an act of receiving an application description including one or more tags describing software objects that are to be included in the software application;

an act of automatically mapping portions of the application description identified by the tags to one or more software objects using reflection, the reflecting including accessing properties associated with the software objects; and

an act of automatically binding properties of the software objects to the portions of the application description based on one or more declarative rules included in the software object properties associated with the software object.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising building a full object graph based on the software objects of the application description, including any properties as bound to the software objects.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the tags comprises a switch tag, the switch tag allowing a user to declaratively specify that the content of an element is to be changed in response to a change in data.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the software objects are common language runtime (CLR) class objects.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising an act of determining, based on the accessed properties associated with the software objects, which parameters can be used with the tags.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising determining, based on the parameters determined to be appropriate for the tags, which types of entities are permissible as values for these parameters.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising an act of generating one or more entities corresponding to an entity type determined to be permissible for the determined appropriate parameters.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the tags is a system level repeater tag.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the system level repeater tag allows as the specification of a sequence of objects by specifying a sequence of data that corresponds to the sequence of objects.

10. The method of claim 9, further comprising binding the sequence of data to the sequence of objects as specified by the repeater tag.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the act of automatically binding properties of the software objects to the portions of the application description based on one or more declarative rules included in the software object properties associated with the software object comprises automatically binding properties of the software objects to one or more arbitrary expressions.

12. The method of claim 8, wherein one or more dependencies associated with the software object properties is propagated using the repeater tag.

13. At a computer system, a method for dynamically updating a software application as a result of changed data values, the method comprising:

an act of receiving an indication that one or more data values in a dynamically configured software application have changed;

an act of automatically remapping tags specified in an application description to one or more software objects using reflection, the reflecting including accessing properties associated with the software objects;

an act of automatically binding properties of the software objects to the portions of the application description based on one or more declarative rules associated with the software objects; and

an act of reconfiguring the software application using the updated mappings and bindings.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising, as a result of the reconfiguration of the software application, an act of displaying the reconfigured software application including the changed data values.

15. The method of claim 13, wherein at least one of the properties is a set property that accepts a list of software objects.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising using a repeater construct with the set property to generate one or more entities.

17. The method of claim 13, wherein the software objects are common language runtime (CLR) class objects.

18. The method of claim 13, wherein at least one of the software object properties includes a parameter pair, the parameter pair including a property value and a logical relationship indicator.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein the act of reconfiguring the software application using the updated mappings and bindings comprises applying the bindings in a top-down manner, such that properties of root objects, as indicated by the logical relationship indicator, are bound first and child objects, as indicated by the logical relationship indicator, are bound subsequently thereafter such that all objects are updated consistently.

20. A computer program product for implementing a method for dynamically building a software application, the computer program product comprising one or more computer-readable media having thereon computer-executable instructions that, when executed by one or more processors of the computing system, cause the computing system to perform the method, the method comprising:

an act of receiving an indication that a software application is to be initiated;

an act of receiving an application description including one or more tags describing software objects that are to be included in the software application;

an act of automatically mapping portions of the application description identified by the tags to one or more software objects using reflection, the reflecting including accessing properties associated with the software objects; and

an act of automatically binding properties of the software objects to the portions of the application description based on one or more declarative rules included in the software object properties associated with the software object.