Method and system for referring to and binding to objects using identifier objects

• US 5,842,018 A
• Filed: 06/06/1995
• Issued: 11/24/1998
• Est. Priority Date: 07/06/1992
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Williams, Antony S., Atkinson, Robert G., Jung, Edward K.
• Primary Examiner(s): Kriess, Kevin A.
• Assistant Examiner(s): Chaki, Kakali
• Application Number:
  US08/470,055
• Time in Patent Office: 1,267 Days
• Field of Search: 395/700
• US Class Current: 715/209
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/289 Object oriented databases
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/93 Document management systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/12 Use of codes for handling textual entities
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/131 Fragmentation of text files, e.g. creating reusable text-blocks; Linking to fragments, e.g. using XInclude; Namespaces
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/134 Hyperlinking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/137 Hierarchical processing, e.g. outlines
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/166 Editing, e.g. inserting or deleting
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/174 Form filling; Merging
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/18 of spreadsheets form-filling G06F40/174
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/449 Object-oriented method invocation or resolution
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/465 Distributed object oriented systems remote method invocation [RMI] G06F9/548
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/543 User-generated data transfer, e.g. clipboards, dynamic data exchange [DDE], object linking and embedding [OLE]
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99944 Object-oriented database structure

Abstract

A method and system for referring to and binding to objects using a moniker object is provided. In a preferred embodiment, a moniker object contains information to identify linked source data and provides methods through which a program can bind to the linked source data. A binding method is provided that returns an instance of an interface through which the linked source data can be accessed. The moniker object can identify source data that is stored persistently or nonpersistently. In addition, moniker objects can be composed to form a composite moniker object. A composite moniker object is used to identify linked source data that is nested in other data. In a preferred embodiment, the moniker object provides other methods including a reducing method that returns a more efficient representation of the moniker object; equality and hash methods for comparing moniker objects; and inverse, common prefix, and relative-path-to methods for comparing and locating moniker objects from other moniker objects. Several implementations of a moniker object are provided including a file moniker, an item moniker, a generic composite moniker, a pointer moniker, and an anti moniker. Each implementation is a moniker class and has a class identifier that identifies code to manage the moniker class.

Claims

1. A method in a computer system of composing a first moniker object with a second moniker object, the method comprising the computer-implemented steps of:

creating an instance of the first moniker object, the created first moniker object having a moniker class identifier that identifies a compose function member that, when executed, creates a composite moniker object that refers to the composition of the first moniker object with an indicated moniker object;

creating an instance of the second moniker object; and

invoking the compose function member identified by the moniker class identifier of the first moniker object, using the created second moniker object as the indicated moniker object, to create an instance of a composite moniker object that refers to the composition of the first moniker object with the second moniker object.

2. The method of claim 1, the first moniker object having naming information that refers to first data, the second moniker object having naming information that refers to second data, wherein the step of invoking the compose function member of the first moniker object combines the naming information of the second moniker object with the naming information of the first moniker object using knowledge of the structure and semantics of the second moniker object when creating the instance of the composite moniker object.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of storing the created composite moniker object.