Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Microsoft Corporation

Michael Barnett

Wolfram Schulte

Margus Veanes

Lev Borisovich Nachmanson

Jonathan David Goldstein

Badrish Chandramouli

Nikolai Tillmann

Wolfgang Grieskamp

Colin L Campbell

William B Dolan

Arul A Menezes

Lucretia Henrica Vanderwende

Brian M Grunkemeyer

Stephen D Richardson

Manuel Alfred Fahndrich

Brian C Beckman

Henricus Johannes Maria Meijer

John Carlton Platt

John Joseph Duffy

Michael M Magruder

Martin Taillefer

Jeffrey Van Gogh

William Bachop Dolan

James Felger Terwilliger

Yuri Gurevich

Wei Zhu

Jared Porter Parsons

Kumar Gaurav Khanna

K Rustan M Leino

Andrew J Pardoe

Alexander Daniel Bromfield

Bruno S Bozza

John Wernsing

Jacqueline Lynette Reid

David Allen Bartolomeo

Melitta L G Andersen

Colin Stebbins Gordon

Katherine E King

Andreas Blass

Lucretia H Vanderwende

An intermediate representation of a workflow of one or more modules may be generated to decouple language implementations of the one or more modules. In response to receiving a workflow of one or more modules, the workflow may be analyzed to determine an optimal implementation language for each of the one or more modules to thereby reduce effects of data marshalling. An intermediate representation of the workflow that is configured to decouple any implementation languages associated with the one or more modules may be generated. To allow for decoupling, the intermediate representation may be written in a declarative language. The generated intermediate representation may then be compiled to generate an executable program that corresponds to the workflow and is implemented in the determined optimal language for each of the one or more modules.

Dynamic pattern matching code generation

Accommodating a particular kind of out-of-order data; namely, when data arrives out-of-order because the data is generated in systems that may have different application timelines. As data arrives, it arrives with a particular partition key. For instance, the partition key might identify the source of the data. The data from each partition key is kept in-order with respect to all other data from that same partition key. That said, data from one key is permitted to have a different timeline as compared to data from any other key. Thus, the data may not be in-order when viewed globally across keys. Rather, data is tolerated to be out-of-order globally so long as the lag in the arrived data is within some tolerated lag. If the data arrives having a time that exceeds the maximum tolerated lag, then the system applies some policy to determine what to do with the delayed data.

Stream data processing on multiple application timelines

Some examples include high-performance query processing of real-time and offline temporal-relational data. Further, some implementations include processing streaming data events by annotating individual events with a first timestamp (e.g., a 'sync-time') and second timestamp that may identify additional event information. The stream of incoming data events may be organized into a sequence of data batches that each include multiple data events. The individual data batches in the sequence may be processed in a non-decreasing 'sync-time' order.

Analytical data processing engine

A front-end compiler compiles source code into intermediate code, that may later be compiled into binary code. The source code defines an execution scope and includes a contract. When a contract is encountered at runtime of an execution scope, further execution of that execution scope is conditioned on whether a predicate associated with the contract is true. The front-end compiler operates so as to preserve the contract so that the contract continues to be semantically structured such that the predicate may be removed from the intermediate language code. The contract may thus continue to be understood by semantic analysis of the contract. Thus, the predicate may be understood by static analysis tools that operate on the intermediate code.

Operating system support for contracts

An error handling system is described herein that provides a facility for controlling the behavior of software when the software violates a contract condition. The system provides configurable runtime behavior that takes place when a contract fails. The error handling system provides an event that a hosting application or other software code can register to handle and that the system invokes upon detecting a contract failure. The application's response to the event determines how the system handles the failure. If the event is unhandled, the system triggers an escalation policy that allows an administrator or application to specify how the system handles contract failures. Thus, the error handling system provides increased control over the handling of contract failures within software code.

Contract failure behavior with escalation policy

In one embodiment, a computer system provides an application programming interface (API) for augmenting an application API. A computer system receives software code written in a second programming language indicating a user's intention to augment an application API with contracts from a contract API written in a first programming language. The software code includes a reference to the contract API. The contracts include assertions indicating appropriate use of the application API. The computer system accesses portions of the contract API according to the reference in the software code and compiles the received software code and the referenced portions of the contract API into an intermediate language (IL) version of the software code. The IL version is in an intermediate language common to both the first programming language and the second programming language. The IL version includes the assertions indicating appropriate use of the application API.

Contract programming for code error reduction

Systems and methods facilitate data augmentation in a computer environment. Data collections of various forms are altered out of band with at least one augmentor specifying alterations thereto. The alterations are applied to an associated collection of data such as programmatic code. In this manner, data can be modified, extended and/or removed from the collection to enable specialization and/or personalization, among other things.

Out of band data augmentation

A program verification process begins by converting a language of the program from a first language into an intermediate language representation. The loops of the program are eliminated. The program is converted from the intermediate language representation into a passive form. Dominators for the passive form of the program are determined. A verification condition is generated from the passive form of the program. The verification condition is structured according to the computed dominators such that when a theorem prover identifies a potential error, portions of the passive form of the program irrelevant to the potential error are ignored.

Hiding irrelevant facts in verification conditions

Techniques and tools for testing multi-threaded or distributed software systems are described. For example, a multi-threaded system is instrumented and executed to produce logs of events that are performed by each of its agents. The agent logs contain a totally ordered series of events per agent, as well as information about accesses to resources shared between the agents. With this information, a partial ordering of the events performed by all the agents is described for the execution. The agent logs are then multiplexed into one or more serialized event orderings, which can then be compared to a specification of the system in a conformance testing engine.

Conformance testing of multi-threaded and distributed software systems

Techniques and tools for generating finite state machines ('FSMs') for a software system with asynchronous callbacks are described. For example, method invocations in a model of the software system are partitioned into observable and controlled method invocations. The controlled method invocations are those which can be run from a test harness while the observed method invocations are those which are observed asynchronously as they are invoked in the system. An FSM is created with observation and control nodes such that observable transitions are found from observation nodes and controlled transitions are found from control nodes. If a state of the model contains both controlled and observable invocations, a timeout transition is added to the FSM to give an implementation time to come up with an observed method invocation before continuing to controlled invocations.

Generating finite state machines for software systems with asynchronous callbacks

State spaces are traversed to produce test cases, or test coverage. Test coverage is a test suite of sequences. Accepting states are defined. Expected costs are assigned to the test graph states. Strategies are created providing transitions to states with lower expected costs. Linear programs and other approximations are discussed for providing expected costs. Strategies are more likely to provide access to an accepting state, based on expected costs. Strategies are used to append transitions to test segments such that the new test segment ends in an accepting state.

Extending test sequences to accepting states

A change management method and system for tool-based document generation which incorporates tool input changes, tool changes, and user changes during iterative document creation. After a tool-based document is generated and saved by a tool, and then edited by a user, during a next iteration of creating the edited document, the tool first generates a new base document. The base document is then saved, and a three-way merge is performed on the former iteration's base document, this iteration's new base document, and the former iteration's edited document. The former iteration's base document serves as the base of the merge process. The merge outputs a merged document, and when further edits are needed, the merged document is edited, and saved as the edited document. If no edits are necessary, the merged document is saved directly as the edited document. In each iteration, the new base document and the edited document are saved for a possible next iteration.

Tool-based iterative document management

To perform conformance checking of a software implementation with a (possibly non-deterministic) specification, a software implementation and a software specification are applied to produce a CT enabled implementation. Nondeterministic choices of the software specification result in assigning a corresponding choice of the CT enabled implementation to a variable. The CT enabled implementation includes a test that the variable then comprises one of the nondeterministic choices of the software specification. To perform conformance testing where the software specification includes ordered steps, and calls to methods of other classes (mandatory calls), a software object is produced and organized such that each step of the software specification has a corresponding code section in the software object. The software object includes instructions to generate an identification of a mandatory call comprised by the software specification, and instructions to test that the state of the implementation conforms to the software specification during the mandatory call.

Conformance execution of non-deterministic specifications for components

The present invention can be used in a natural language processing system to determine a relationship (such as similarity in meaning) between two textual segments. The relationship can be identified or determined based on logical graphs generated from the textual segments. A relationship between first and second logical graphs is determined. This is accomplished regardless of whether there is an exact match between the first and second logical graphs. In one embodiment, the first graph represents an input textual discourse unit. The second graph, in one embodiment, represents information in a lexical knowledge base (LKB). The input graph can be matched against the second graph, if they have similar meaning, even if the two differ lexically or structurally.

System and method for matching a textual input to a lexical knowledge based and for utilizing results of that match

System and method for matching a textual input to a lexical knowledge base and for utilizing results of that match

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Seattle, WA, United States of America

Michael Barnett