Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Facebook, Inc.

Microsoft Corporation

Joshua Ryan Williams

Clemens Alden Szyperski

Donald F Box

Geoffrey M Kizer

Christopher L Anderson

Quetzalcoatl Bradley

Martin James Gudgin

Jeffrey S Pinkston

John David Doty

Anthony J Moore

Vance Palmer Morrison

David Michael Miller

Michael Philip Arcuri

John Lawrence Hamby

Michael Slater

Stef Marc Smet

Kevin Donald Kelly

Bo Yin

Karthik Subramanyam

Robert Daniel Paul Masson

David McCafferty Lapayowker

Martin J Gudgin

Techniques that enable a third party to author and add functionality to a target application. A third party may create or author a script that encodes the functionality to be added to the target application. The script may then be provided to and executed by the target application, where execution of the script causes the functionality to be added to the target application. In certain embodiments, the added functionality may be in the form of effects that are output via the target application when the script is executed by the target application. The effects may include audio-visual effects that are displayed or output by the target application and may also include displaying data provided by a third party.

Enabling third parties to add effects to an application

An online system evaluates the quality of a content publisher displaying sponsored content items. To determine a likelihood of conversion actions associated with the sponsored content items, the online system uses information about users and their interactions with sponsored content items featured within the content publisher against interactions with sponsored content items featured within a benchmark system (e.g., online system). By determining a ratio of these interactions, the online system can determine a likelihood of conversion actions for the content publisher. The online system uses this likelihood of conversions to determine a publisher quality score that it uses to normalize third party value contributions toward placing sponsored content items on the content publisher. Thus, third party systems no longer need to be concerned about the intrinsic value of a given content publisher as third party value contributions are normalized based on the content publisher's conversion rates.

Evaluating content publisher options against benchmark publisher

A nominal type framework can be configured to efficiently correlate different nominal types together based on a minimum set of common type shapes or structures. In one implementation, a developer identifies a number of different nominal types of interest (source types), and identifies the minimum set of common type shapes to be accessed by an application program. The minimum set of common type shapes can then be used to create an intermediate type (target type) to which each of the other different source types can be mapped. For example, one or more proxies can be created that map shapes of the one or more source types to corresponding shapes of the created target type. The application program created by the developer, in turn, can access, operate on, or otherwise use the mapped data of each different source type through a single target type.

Efficiently correlating nominally incompatible types

A common data type structure can be used to correlate access requests between applications that implement data in accordance with different types or type structures. In one implementation, a common data structure includes schemes for operations, sequences, records, and atoms (i.e., undefined). The system can then map any type structure to the schemes of the common data structure. In operation, a request for data by an application can involve identifying one or more proxies used by an application to map the data to the common data structure. The proxies map the data to the common data structure based on the shape of the data (to the extent it can be identified). The proxies then can return one or more data structures that comprise the identified mapping information. The application can then perform operations directly on the received data structures.

Accessing different application data via a common data structure

Computing responses to semantic queries. A method includes accessing a plurality of objects that represent source code for an input program. The source code is transformed into a plurality of immutable objects that are structured such that the immutable objects can be used to derive any response as defined by the semantic rules about the source code. A query is received from a requestor requesting a semantic characteristic of the input program. The semantic characteristic is calculated. The semantic characteristic is returned to the requestor. The semantic characteristic is cached in a cache. Information describing a dependency between the cached semantic characteristic and one or more of the objects in the plurality of objects is stored.

Partial on-demand lazy semantic analysis

Particular portions of program execution data are specified and organized in semantic groups. A grouping expression written in a transformation syntax language specifies a pattern and a replacement, for grouping performance data samples. An exception to the pattern can also be specified. In response to the grouping expression, a cost accounting shows groups and their costs. The grouping expression may operate on names and/or name-associated characteristics such as private/public status, author, directory, and the like. Samples may represent nodes in a directed acyclic graph memorializing call stacks or memory allocation. Grouping expressions are used to group nodes and consolidate costs by various procedures when making modified sample stacks: clustering-by-name, entry-group-clustering, folding-by-name, a folding-by-cost. An entry group clustering shows at least one entry point name while avoiding unwanted detail.

Semantic grouping for program performance data analysis

An observation system includes mechanisms for efficiently tracking the state of source components, which include functions, arguments, or values, etc. In one implementation, an observing component requests that a source component processes a request. The observation system then identifies all possible components in a dependency chain for the request, and all such components that are configured for change notifications. A dependency registry stores a representation of each identified component that is configured for change notifications. Any time any component configured for change notifications changes, including indirectly related components, the observing component can be immediately notified of the change, without having to reprocess the entire set of component dependencies.

Observing and reporting changes in complex software dependencies

A signaling system of the present invention provides a synchronized approach to delivering, reporting, and/or otherwise processing status changes in a software dependency chain. In a first phase, the signaling system identifies all dependencies between software components, and further sets a binary indicator of each node in a first representation. After identifying any changes in a source node, the system (e.g., a value is updated), the system updates each binary indicator to a second setting. In a second phase, the system initiates all listeners in the dependency chain in an essentially progressive order from source node, to intermediate node, and end-node, etc. Once all listeners have had a chance to perform one or more processes based on the updated value, the system can discard the dependency graph, allowing a new dependency graph to be built for subsequent value changes.

Consistently signaling state changes

Growing community of inventors

Seattle, WA, United States of America

Joshua Ryan Williams