Relationship modeling
AssigneeMicrosoft Corporation
InventorsBenjamin Albahari, Michael Deem, Henricus Meijer
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Abstract
The subject disclosure pertains to relationships between items. Relationships between items can be defined external to the items themselves thereby providing a modular, flexible and extensible system. For instance, relationships between items can be defined in a class that includes methods for returning particular elements or values in accordance with a specified relationship. Moreover, a compiler or like system can be extended to accept relationship expressions in a simple property format and direct such calls to specific methods.
Claims20
A computer-implemented relationship system comprising the following computer-executable components:
- an item receiver component that obtains two or more programmatic items;
- and
- a relationship generation component that receives items from the receiver component and generates a construct that defines one or more relationships between the items.
A computer-readable medium having stored thereon a data structure comprising:
- a first data type;
- a second data type;
- and
- a class that defines relationships between the first data type and the second data type independent of the types.
A computer-implemented method that facilitates data interaction comprising the following computer executable acts:
- receiving a relationship expression between two or more items;
- locating a method external to the items associated with the expression;
- and
- executing the method to compute the relationship and/or navigate amongst the items.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.