Merging XML documents automatically using attributes based comparison

• US 20110066626A1
• Filed: 09/15/2009
• Published: 03/17/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 09/15/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Dharmalingam, Krishnamoorthy
• Granted Patent: US 8,543,619 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/758
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/143 Markup, e.g. Standard Generalized Markup Language [SGML] or Document Type Definition [DTD]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/174 Form filling; Merging

Abstract

An aspect of the present invention provides a technique to automatically merge information contained in two or more XML documents in to a single merged XML document. The merging technique is based on a comparison logic that involves comparing XML elements of one of the XML document with elements of the other XML document and this element comparison is based on at least one XML attribute associated with the elements of the XML documents and termed as a merge attribute in the embodiments of the invention. An aspect of the present invention involves parsing the XML documents and providing a list of attributes asscociated with the elements of the XML documents and allowing a user to select one or more attributes as merge attributes. In yet another embodiment the XML:ID-type is selected as the default merge attribute.

Claims

1. A method for automatically merging data contained in a first XML document and data contained in a second XML document, the method comprising:

performing a set of comparisons, each comparison of the set of comparisons comparing an element of a set of elements of the first XML document with an element of a set of elements of the second XML document;

wherein the comparison is based on at least one merge attribute, the at least one merge attribute being associated with the elements of the set of elements of the first XML document and the second XML document;

wherein each comparison involves comparing the value of the at least one merge attribute of the first XML document with that of the second XML document;

determining from the set of comparisons, one or more conflicts in the first XML document and the second XML document;

generating a merged XML document by resolving the one or more conflicts and identifying data from both the first XML document and the second XML document to be contained in the merged XML document.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein in each comparison the elements of the set of elements of the first XML document and of the second XML document being compared match when their respective values for the at least one merge attribute are equal.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein a first set of comparisons of the set of comparisons comprises, comparison of the first element of the first XML document with all the elements of the second XML document.

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising, initiating a copy operation of the unmatched elements of the second XML document to the first XML document, wherein the unmatched elements of the second XML document are determined from the first set of comparisons.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein, the copy operation comprises a second set of comparisons of the set of comparisons, the second set of comparisons comprising comparison of the unmatched elements of the second XML document with all the elements of the first XML document excluding the first element considered in the first set of comparisons.

6. The method of claim 2, further comprising, comparison of the child elements of the matching elements of the first XML document and the second XML document.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising:

comparison of other attributes, and text content of the matching elements;

determining based on the value of a replace flag, a selected element of the matching elements, when the attributes or text content or both of the matching elements are determined as unequal based on their comparison; and

copying the attributes, and text content of the selected element to the merged XML document.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

parsing the first XML document and second XML document to generate a list of attributes;

sending the list of attributes to a requesting system; and

receiving from the requesting system the at least one merge attribute selected from the list of attributes.

10. The method of claim 8, further comprising specifying, for the at least one merge attribute, the XML namespace definition for the element associated with the at least one merge attribute.

11. The method of claim 8, wherein, each comparison of the set of comparisons is based on different merge attributes as selected by the requesting system.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one merge attribute is dynamically selected by a requesting system for each comparison of the set of comparisons.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one merge attribute is an ID-type attribute associated with the element of the set of elements of the first XML document and the second XML document.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein the determining from the set of comparisons determines that there are no conflicts in the first XML document and the second XML document and the generating step generates the merged XML document containing all the elements in the set of elements of the first XML document and the second XML document.

15. The method of claim 1, 0 further comprising, sequencing the order of the elements in the merged XML document in accordance with an XSD document.

16. The method of claim 1, further comprising, generating in the merged XML document a unique identifier for an ID-type attribute of an element in the merged XML document, when the one or more conflicts is a conflict between two unmatched elements having unequal values for the at least one merge attribute but having equal ID-type attribute values.

17. The method of claim 1, further comprising, generating one or more events corresponding to each comparison of the set of comparisons.

19. The digital processing system of claim 17, further comprising:

a first set of comparisons and a second set of comparisons in the set of comparisons, wherein the first set of comparisons comprises comparisons of a first element of the set of elements of the first XML document with the elements of the set of elements of the second XML document;

initiating a copy operation for copying one or more elements of the set of elements of the second XML document to the first XML document,

wherein the copy operation performs the second set of comparisons before copying the one or more elements of the set of elements of the second XML document, and

wherein the second set of comparisons comprises comparison of the one or more elements of the second XML document with all but the first element of the first XML document;

identifying from each of the first set of comparisons and the second set of comparisons, matching elements in the first XML document and the second XML document; and

comparing, attributes, and child elements of the matching elements in the first XML document and the second XML document.

20. The digital processing system of claim 17, 0 further comprising:

determining a first set of elements and a second set of elements from the set of comparisons;

wherein the first set of elements contains non-conflicting elements from the first and second XML documents and the second set of elements contains the one or more conflicting elements from the first and second XML documents;

forming a third set of elements by resolving the one or more conflicting elements in the second set of elements; and

generating the merged XML document containing elements from the third set of elements and elements from the first set of elements.

21. The digital processing system of claim 19, wherein, the one or more conflicting elements include one or more of:

duplicate elements in the first XML document and the second XML document, matching elements with unequal text content, or non-matching elements with equal ID-type attribute.

18. A digital processing system comprising:

at least a memory and a processor and capable of executing software instructions corresponding to the operations of;

receiving from a client system a request to merge a first XML document with a second XML document;

performing a set of comparisons, each comparison of the set of comparisons comparing an element of a set of elements of the first XML document with an element of a set of elements of the second XML document;

wherein the comparison is based on at least one merge attribute, the at least one merge attribute being associated with the elements of the set of elements of the first XML document and the second XML document;

wherein each comparison involves comparing a value of the at least one merge attribute of the first XML document with that of the second XML document;

identifying from the set of comparisons, one or more conflicting elements in the first XML document and the second XML document;

generating a merged XML document by resolving the one or more conflicting elements, and identifying data from both the first XML document and the second XML document to be contained in the merged XML document ; and

sending to the client system the merged XML document.

22. A digital processing system for comparing a first XML document with a second XML document, said digital processing system comprising:

at least a memory and a processor and capable of executing software instructions performing the operations of;

receiving from a client system across a network, a request to compare the first XML document with the second XML document;

parsing the first XML document and the second XML document;

communicating to the client system, a list of attributes in the first XML document and the second XML document;

receiving from the client system at least one merge attribute selected from the list of attributes;

performing a set of comparisons, each comparison of the set of comparisons comparing an element of a set of elements of the first XML document with an element of a set of elements of the second XML document;

wherein the comparison is based on at least one merge attribute, the at least one merge attribute being associated with the elements of the set of elements of the first XML document and the second XML document;

wherein each comparison involves comparing the value of the at least one merge attribute of the first XML document with that of the second XML document; and

generating one or more events corresponding to result of each comparison of the set of comparisons.