Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Scott M Roberts

Stephen Michael Danton

Laurent Mollicone

Jordan Sehn

Michael C Murray

Yuri Rychikhin

Florian W H Voss

Siddharth Jayadevan

Florian Voss

James Randall Flynn

Brian Teutsch

David K Peck

Joshua S Bell

Jun Jin

Tad D Price

Donald F Box

Alessandro Catorcini

Michael A Smuga

Andrew Paul Begun

Gunter Leeb

William A Manis

Noaa Avital

Samar Abbas

Willson Kulandai Raj David

David Matthew Snow

Shuk-Yan Lai

Shung Lai Franky Lam

Nicholas K Dallett

Anthony Scott Williams

Yitzchak Naveh-Benjamin

Willson Kulandai-Raj David

Aleksandr Tysbert

Visual landmarks are used to organize diagrams. Elements of a diagram can be arranged in accordance with configurable defined properties of visual landmarks to provide some degree of layout structure within the diagram. Users can customize visual landmarks to cause the visual landmarks to exhibit desired behavior.

Using visual landmarks to organize diagrams

Defining a layout of diagram elements can be performed in response to user input that includes one or more declarative statements specifying conditional patterns based on attributes of diagram elements, wherein the conditional patterns define layouts of diagram elements. Implementation of the layouts is dependent on conditions defined in the declarative statements and one or more values of one or more of the attributes. Implementations can further include organizing the conditional patterns as a pattern definition, wherein the pattern definition is stored on a computer readable medium in such a way that the pattern definition is retrievable by an application program that uses the pattern definition to evaluate the conditional patterns using values of attributes of one or more diagram elements. Representations of the diagram elements can be displayed according to the layouts when conditions for implementing the layouts are satisfied.

Diagram layout patterns

The present invention extends to methods, systems, and computer program products for using visual landmarks to organize diagrams. Embodiments of the invention facilitate using visual landmarks to organize elements within a diagram. Elements of a diagram can be arranged in accordance with configurable defined properties of visual landmarks to provide some degree of layout structure within the diagram. Accordingly, embodiments of the invention provide a user experience that provides some structure but retains the flexibility of free form editing. Users can customize visual landmarks to cause the visual landmarks to exhibit desired behavior.

A database integration viewer that allows additional properties to be associated with a record as viewed in a single record or table, even though those additional properties are not owned by the record in the underlying source record or table in the database. Using this integration view, a viewed version of record or table may be different than the actual structure of the source record or table. In the viewed version of the record or table, the viewed record or table or may include some or all of the properties for the records of the subject record or table, while incorporating one or more additional properties for the record into the viewed table. The properties may be scalars, or may be computed to populate the viewed version of the record or table.

Database integrated viewer

Performing incremental runtime composition. A method includes a computing system receiving a user input gesture modifying a diagram displayed on a diagram surface. The diagram includes a first element, a second element, and a plurality of elements connected to the second element laid out in a particular layout pattern with respect to the second element. The method further includes interpreting the user input gesture to be a gesture creating a graph by connecting the first element to the second element of the diagram. The method further includes performing an auto layout of the diagram by automatically, and without user intervention, repositioning the second element with respect to the first element but without substantially repositioning the plurality of elements with respect to the second element by moving the second element and the plurality of elements as an atomic unit.

Incremental run-time layout composition

Defining a layout of diagram elements. A method includes receiving user input. The user input includes one or more declarative statements specifying conditional patterns based on attributes of diagram elements. The conditional patterns define layouts of diagram elements. Implementation of the layouts is dependent on conditions defined in the declarative statements and one or more values of one or more of the attributes. The method further includes organizing the conditional patterns as a pattern definition. The pattern definition is stored on a computer readable medium. The pattern definition is stored such that the pattern definition is retrievable by an application program that uses the pattern definition to evaluate the conditional patterns using values of attributes of one or more diagram elements. The application is also configured to display representations of the diagram elements according to the layouts when conditions for implementing the layouts are satisfied.

Data-driven configuration of various views on data models. A framework may be provided that offers one or more parameterized view generation components, each aimed at generating a particular view type in response to configuration data that populates the parameters of the associated component. A user or other computing entity merely provides configuration data to an appropriate view generation component to generate a custom view. That custom view may then optionally perhaps be applied to any number of data models, or perhaps not applied to any data model at all and just saved for perhaps some future use. This view generation may generate composite views on a data model, or even hierarchical views on a data model.

Configurable view on data models

The embodiments disclosed herein extend to methods, systems, and computer program products for error resolution in a computing system that includes a health module. The health module monitors components of the system for runtime errors and provides error resolution templates. The error resolution templates include metadata that specifies actions that may resolve the error and error handlers corresponding to the actions that may correct the error. The system may be extended by the addition and/or modification of the error resolution templates. The error resolution templates may also be used to facilitate the correction of runtime errors in the system.

Open error-handling system

The present invention extends to methods, systems, and computer program products for hierarchically presenting tabular data. Embodiments of the invention utilize out-denting and/or color coding to organize and present tabular data to a user so that comparisons across multiple levels of data are possible while maintaining hierarchical organization of a model. That is, the columnar structure of tables can be maintained to allow rich cross-column comparison within various levels of nesting. Further, scaling is significantly increased since nesting has a reduced (and potentially no) impact on column alignment.

Hierarchically presenting tabular data

Systems and/or methods that enable addition of a designer-created aspect originating from one electronic form template into another electronic form template are described. The systems and/or methods may also, in one embodiment, enable a user to graphically package designer-created aspects of an existing electronic form template into a component capable of being added to another electronic form template. In another embodiment, these systems and/or methods may enable mapping of an existing non-structural designer-created aspect originating from one electronic form template onto a data structure of another electronic form template.

Designer-created aspect for an electronic form template

Systems and methods enabling creation and/or use of an electronic form capable of allowing a user to select from mutually exclusive options without the electronic form being in an invalid state are described. One of the described electronic forms remains valid to its schema by atomic swapping of data substructures corresponding to the form's mutually exclusive options. A method and a user interface for creating some of these electronic forms are also described.

Mutually exclusive options in electronic forms

Systems and/or methods ('tools') are described that convert or present conversion problems for electronic documents. The tools may convert a generally unstructured electronic document to a generally structured electronic document using non-visual textual and layout information of the unstructured document. The tools can also present possible problems with this or other types of conversion. And the tools can enable a user to alter an electronic document's schema without altering its visual layout.

Enabling selection of an inferred schema part

A graphical user interface for displaying hierarchical data, such as extensible markup language (XML) data, in hypertext markup language (HTML) format in a convenient and efficient manner. For data having subordinate data, an actuatable subordinate data indicator is displayed on the user interface. When actuated, the subordinate data is displayed in a similar format as the parent data. Two methods are described for building the tables. A first method initially parses all the data and builds the necessary tables for display. A second method initially parses only the top level of data and then builds subordinate tables as they are requested by a user.

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Bothell, WA, United States of America

Scott M Roberts