Electronic form aggregation

• US 7,334,187 B1
• Filed: 08/06/2003
• Issued: 02/19/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 08/06/2003
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Shur, Andrey, Essey, Edward G., Stanciu, Constantin, Halstead, Patrick
• Primary Examiner(s): Hong; Stephen
• Assistant Examiner(s): Queler; Adam M.
• Application Number:
  US10/636,475
• Time in Patent Office: 1,658 Days
• Field of Search: 715/513, 715/511, 707/100
• US Class Current: 715/222
• 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

A system and method that aggregates information from one electronic form into another electronic form is described. For sufficiently similar electronic forms, the system and method aggregates information from one electronic form into another automatically and without use of a transformation file. For electronic forms governed by substantially dissimilar schemas, the system and method automatically aggregates information from one electronic form into another with the aid of a transformation file.

Claims

1. A computer-readable storage medium comprising computer-executable instructions that perform the following when executed by a computer:

determine, without user interaction, a first schema of a first electronic form and a second schema of a second electronic form;

determine, 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 matches a node of the second electronic form;

determine that the first node includes first data including text or rich text data;

determine that the second node includes second data including text or rich text data; and

append the first data included within the node of the first electronic form to the second data within the node of the second electronic form.

2. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the determination of the first schema includes analysis of a structure of the first electronic form.

3. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the determination of 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.

4. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the determination of the first schema includes accessing a file associated with the first electronic form.

5. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the determination of the second schema includes accessing a file associated with the second electronic form.

6. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the first electronic form and the second electronic form are written in part with a markup language.

7. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the first electronic form and the second electronic form are written in part in XML.

8. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the first data includes information written in a markup language.

9. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the first data includes information written in XML.

10. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, further comprising:

receive, from a user, a request to import the data from the first electronic form into the second electronic form.

11. A computer-readable storage medium comprising computer-executable instructions that perform the following when executed by a computer:

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

associate, without user interaction, a node of the first electronic form and a node of the second electronic form if the first schema and the second schema indicate that the two nodes are capable of association;

determine that the node of the first electronic form includes first data including text or rich text data;

determine that the node of the second electronic form includes second data including text or rich text data; and

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

12. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the association includes matching 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 first electronic form'"'"'s node and a second schema fragment of the second schema that governs the second electronic form'"'"'s node indicating that the first electronic form'"'"'s node and the second electronic form'"'"'s node are capable of association.

13. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the association includes the node of the second electronic form being the second electronic form'"'"'s root node, if the first electronic form'"'"'s node is not capable of association to every node of the second electronic form other than the root node.

14. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the association includes associating a plurality of nodes of the first electronic form with a plurality of nodes of the second electronic form.

15. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the association includes associating a plurality of nodes of the first electronic form with a plurality of nodes of the second electronic form and the append includes appending the data within the plurality of nodes of the first electronic form into the plurality of nodes of the second electronic form.

16. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the append includes merging attributes of the first electronic form'"'"'s node with the second electronic form'"'"'s node if a schema fragment governing the second node contains one or more child nodes but does not allow additional child nodes.

17. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the first data included within the node of the first electronic form and the second data included within the node of the second electronic form is written in XML.

18. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the first electronic form and the second electronic form are written in part in XML.

19. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the first schema and the second schema are written in part in XSD.

20. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, further comprising:

receive, from a user, a request to append data from the first electronic form into the second electronic form.

21. A computer-readable storage medium comprising computer-executable instructions that perform the following when executed by a computer:

determine 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 of the first node and a second schema fragment of 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;

analyze a child node of the first node to determine a correlation between the child node and another node of the plurality of nodes of the second electronic form if attributes of the first node are merged into the node of the second electronic form, or

analyze, skipping any child nodes of the first node, a sibling node of the first node to determine a correlation between the sibling node and another node of the plurality of nodes of the second electronic form; and

provide this correlation between the child node and the other node or the sibling node and the other node effective to enable importation of data from the child node or the sibling node into the other node of the second electronic form.

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

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

associating, without user interaction, a node of the first electronic form and a node of the second electronic form if the first schema and the second schema indicate that the two nodes are capable of association;

determining that the node of the first electronic form includes first data including text or rich text data;

determining that the node of the second electronic form includes second data including text or rich text data; and

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