Generic XAD processing model

• US 8,201,147 B2
• Filed: 02/08/2008
• Issued: 06/12/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 02/08/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Williams, Antony Scott, Hackmann, Christopher D., Aitken, William Emeric, Kent, Simon David, Hristov, Vladimir Nedkov, Jayadevan, Siddharth, Cran, Simeon J., Szyperski, Clemens A.
• Primary Examiner(s): WANG, RONGFA PHILIP
• Application Number:
  US12/028,686
• Publication Number:
  US 20090204944A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,586 Days
• Field of Search: None
• 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 comprising one or more processors and memory storing executable instructions that implement a declarative language framework for building software applications from declarative language application descriptions, a method for dynamically building a software application from a declarative language application description, the method comprising:

an act of receiving, at the declarative framework, an indication that a software application is to be initiated;

an act of receiving, at the declarative framework, a declarative language application description, the declarative language description comprising one or more tags in a declarative language that each contain one or more parameters to be mapped to properties of a class object that is to be included in the software application;

an act of the declarative framework using reflection to identify, at runtime, properties of a plurality of candidate class objects that could be used to implement functionality defined in each tag;

an act of the declarative framework selecting one of the plurality of candidate class objects for each tag, each selected class object having properties that match the one or more parameters defined in the corresponding tag;

an act of the declarative framework automatically mapping the parameters in each of the tags to the corresponding selected class object; and

an act of automatically binding the properties of the selected class object to the parameters of the corresponding tag based on one or more declarative rules associated with the properties.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising building a full object graph of the class objects identified for each tag of the declarative language application description, including the properties bound to the parameters.

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 class 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 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 the properties of the selected class objects to the parameters of the corresponding tag based on one or more declarative rules associated with the properties comprises automatically binding the properties of the selected class objects to one or more arbitrary expressions.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising building a full object graph of the class objects identified for each tag of the declarative language application description, including) The method of claim 8, wherein one or more dependencies associated with the properties is propagated using the repeater tag.

14. The method of claim 1, further comprising building a full object graph of the class objects identified for each tag of the declarative language application description, including) 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 parameters.

13. At a computer system comprising one or more processors and memory storing executable instructions that implement a declarative language framework for building software applications from declarative language application descriptions, a method for dynamically updating a software application, that was built from a declarative language application description, as a result of changed data values, the method comprising:

an act of receiving, at the declarative framework, an indication that one or more parameters of one or more tags in a dynamically configured software application have changed, the software application being dynamically configured from a declarative language application description that includes tags that each contain one or more parameters;

an act of the declarative framework using reflection to identify, at runtime, properties of a plurality of candidate class objects that could be used to implement functionality defined in each tag;

an act of the declarative framework selecting one of the plurality of candidate class objects for each tag, each selected class object having properties that match the one or more parameters defined in the corresponding tag;

an act of the declarative framework automatically mapping the parameters in each of the tags to the corresponding selected class object; and

an act of automatically binding the properties of the selected class object to the parameters of the corresponding tag based on one or more declarative rules associated with the properties; and

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

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 class objects are common language runtime (CLR) class objects.

18. The method of claim 13, wherein at least one of the 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 physical storage media having stored 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, at the declarative framework, an indication that a software application is to be initiated;

an act of receiving, at the declarative framework, a declarative language application description, the declarative language description comprising one or more tags in a declarative language that each contain one or more parameters to be mapped to properties of a class object that is to be included in the software application;

an act of the declarative framework using reflection to identify, at runtime, properties of a plurality of candidate class objects that could be used to implement functionality defined in each tag;

an act of the declarative framework selecting one of the plurality of candidate class objects for each tag, each selected class object having properties that match the one or more parameters defined in the corresponding tag;

an act of the declarative framework automatically mapping the parameters in each of the tags to the corresponding selected class object; and

an act of automatically binding the properties of the selected class object to the parameters of the corresponding tag based on one or more declarative rules associated with the properties.