Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Michael R Santoro

Christopher G Kaler

Bradley Bartz

Zachary L Anderson

Christopher D Reeves

Some large software development projects need more than one versioning system to accommodate not only a diversity of document formats and data types, but also the geographic diversity of its programmers. However, having more than one versioning system is generally very expensive. A major factor in this expense is the requirement for a separate application program interface (API) for each separate versioning system. Accordingly, the inventors devised an exemplary API architecture that can be extended with 'plug-in'protocol providers to include virtually any number of separate version stores or versioning systems. The exemplary architecture includes a generic command parser and a command dispatcher. The command dispatcher operatively couples to one or more protocol providers, each coupled to at least one version store. Inclusion of the OLE DB-compliant interface and the command parser in the exemplary embodiment saves the protocol providers the effort and expense of replicating these features, thereby reducing the cost of adding version stores.

Extensible architecture for versioning APIs

Some large software development projects need more than one versioning system to accommodate not only a diversity of document formats and data types, but also the geographic diversity of its programmers. However, having more than one versioning systems is generally very expensive. A major factor in this expense is the requirement for a separate application program interface (API) for each separate versioning system. Accordingly, the inventors devised an exemplary API architecture which can be extended with 'plug-in' protocol providers to include virtually any number of separate version stores or versioning systems. The exemplary architecture includes a generic command parser and a command dispatcher. The command dispatcher operatively couples to one or more protocol providers, each coupled to at least one version store. Inclusion of the OLE DB-compliant interface and the command parser in the exemplary embodiment saves the protocol providers the effort and expense of replicating these features, thereby reducing the cost of adding version stores.

Growing community of inventors

Wallingford, WA, United States of America

Michael R Santoro