Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Microsoft Corporation

Jeffrey P Snover

Bruce Gordon Payette

James W Truher

Daryl W Wray

Rahim Maknojia

Kenneth M Hansen

Bhalchandra Pandit

James G Robertson

Sameer S Mutatkar

Casey Kiernan

Paul B Darcy

Steve A DeLuca

Jeffrey Dick Jones

Juhan Lee

Kevin Hodge

Sally J Martin

Kaushik Pushpavanam

Liu Hong

Travis Muhlestein

Serguei Endrikhovski

Steven Patterson Burns

John Patrick Thompson

Narayanan Lakshmanan

Lee Holmes

Hitesh Raigandhi

Marco Chierotti

Jonathan Marshall Rowlett

Paul Michel Elrif

Arieh A Retik

Rajesh Chandrashekaran

Christine Moeller

John Anthony Messec

Bradford Daniels

Daniel Thomas Travison, Jr

Xiaoyong Zhou

Hemant Mahawar

Miriam Rosenberg

Jonathan S Newman

Constantin Sorin Oprea

Manoj Kumar Ampalam

Shankara Shastry Mc

George Xie

Jim Truher

Subramanian Viswanathan

Dana Jin Huang

Shankara Shastry

Rajesh Chandraschekaran

M C Shastry

M C Shankara Shastry

Daniel T Travison Jr

Systems and methods for desired state configuration (DSC) are disclosed. DSC provides the ability to perform declarative configuration natively within a shell language and to use early-bound schematized data constructs embedded in a late-bound shell language. This allows declarative programming elements to be incorporated into imperative languages, such as scripts for configuration management. Script may combine the power of an imperative shell language with the ease of use of a declarative language and may use both imperative and declarative syntax in the same language.

Declarative configuration elements

A configuration management system provides a partitioned data model for collecting and representing configuration information from a diverse set of sources to allow easier modeling of very large, highly redundant sets of enterprise configuration information. The system partitions large configuration schema into logical subcomponents that can be combined, shared, and reused. The system also partitions instantiated data models into logical sub-models that can be combined, shared, reused, and incrementally updated. Each product team can provide its own configuration schema, which allows the domain experts in a particular field to provide reusable models for their products. These models may include sub-models that allow reuse of selected portions of the configuration schema. When the system stores data related to each portion of the model, it stores the data in a partitioned manner that makes incremental updates of each component of the model more straightforward and less resource intensive.

Incrementally managing distributed configuration data

Described herein are technologies directed towards providing a common mechanism for tracking the activity status of one or more software actions of a computer system. Furthermore, the described technologies facilitate managing the presentation of the tracked activity status of individual actions and/or of a collection of such actions.

Common software activity status representation

An events interface is described, and the events interface includes event sequences that indicate software application events that occur in relation to each other along an adjustable continuum. Each of the event sequences corresponds to a software application that is executable on one or more computer devices, such as a hosted application by the computer devices, where modules of the software are each executable on the computer devices. The events interface also includes past event indicators along the event sequences that each present as a past software application event that occurred on at least one of the computer devices.

Computer system events interface

A workflow scripting system is described herein that combines the features of workflows and scripts by automatically translating between the two models. Using the system, a script author can create workflows on the fly using familiar scripting language, and a workflow author can use scripting steps to perform actions. Workflows run in this manner can be setup to execute in their own process to improve robustness or efficiency. Operations in an enterprise environment frequently take a long time and are subject to interruptions. By adding reliability concepts of workflows to a shell environment, users of the system can write scripts to address common needs of large-scale computing environments. Thus, the workflow scripting system blends the available resources provided by workflow and scripting environments to provide a host of powerful, advanced capabilities to IT personnel.

Automatic transcoding and semantic adaptation between scripting and workflow systems

Method and system for direct access of language metadata are disclosed. In an implementation, the method includes receiving commands from a user to modify language metadata of a programming language. The metadata is modified based on the command and the modified metadata is utilized as a feature in the programming language at runtime.

Direct access of language metadata

A computer system events interface is described. In embodiment(s), the computer system events interface includes event indicators that each indicate a past computer event. An event indicator is selectable to initiate an information display pertaining to a corresponding past computer event. The computer system events interface can also include additional event indicators that each indicate a future computer event. An additional event indicator is selectable to initiate a configuration interface from which a corresponding future computer event can be modified. The computer system events interface can also include current event indicators that each indicate a current computer event. A current event indicator is also selectable to initiate a configuration interface from which corresponding current computer events can be modified.

Systems and/or methods are presented that may be used to enable operation of a command line having an upstream command and a downstream command where the upstream command may output data of a type that may be unacceptable as input to the downstream command.

Command-line data-type discovery and conversion

A computer monitoring system uses a set of parameterized models to gather information about monitored devices. The models include scripts for gathering information, as well as type validation and data validation functions. The parameters within the model are used to generate user interface prompts and to populate discovery scripts as well as data validation scripts. In some cases, the models may include localization settings that may customize the user interface and validation output for different languages. A processing engine may generate a user interface from the parameters defined in the models, customize the scripts from the user input, and cause the scripts to be executed. The data gathered by the scripts may be analyzed using type validation and data validation.

Parameterized computer monitoring system

Script is accessed and interpreted to identify an executable component. Processing context configuration files may then be used to identify an appropriate processing context for the identified executable component. Examples of processing context include, but are not limited to, a process in which the identified executable component is to run, one or more adaptations to perform on the component prior to running, and/or a security context in which to run the component. Processing context thus need not be specified in the actual script itself. The identified components may then be executed in the identified processing context.

External configuration of processing content for script

In an administrative tool environment, user input is supplied to an administrative tool framework for processing. The administrative tool framework maps user input to cmdlet objects. The cmdlet objects describe a grammar for parsing the user input and input objects to obtain expected input parameters. The input objects are emitted by one cmdlet and are available as input to another cmdlet. The input objects may be any precisely parseable input, such as .NET objects, plain strings, XML documents, and the like. The input objects are not live objects. The cmdlets may operate within the same process. Alternatively, one cmdlet may operate locally while another cmdlet operates remotely. The cmdlets may be provided by the administrative tool framework or may be provided by third party developers. The user input may be supplied to the framework via a host cmdlet.

Administrative tool environment

Runtime polymorphism may be enabled with metadata that is usable for casting objects to casted objects. In an exemplary media implementation, processor-executable instructions cause operations including: discover at least one type of an object while in a runtime environment; and create a casted object from the object by casting the object to the casted object using metadata. An exemplary computing device implementation includes: one or more processors; and one or more media in operative communication therewith, the one or more media including: an object of a first type; metadata that is capable of being used to cast unknown objects in a runtime environment; and processor-executable instructions that, when executed, cause the one or more processors to perform an action including: casting the object of the first type to a casted object of a second type using the metadata in the runtime environment, the first type differing from the second type.

Runtime polymorphism

An exemplary software architecture allows for defining and accessing data and auxiliary data for an item in a navigable namespace. For example, such an exemplary architecture can include a provider engine operable to access data for an item in a navigable namespace, an auxiliary provider engine operable to access auxiliary data for the item and an auxiliary provider class for use in defining the auxiliary data for the item and accessing the auxiliary data for the item. Various other exemplary technologies are also disclosed.

Auxiliary data provider

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Woodinville, WA, United States of America

Jeffrey P Snover