Patent Application
20080134059
The invention relates to producing charts from data. More specifically, the invention relates to methods and systems to interface between a chart requestor and chart producers.
Computers and data processing systems are often used to perform complex manipulations and calculations on large data sets. Once the data is processed as desired, it often presented to the user for review. For large, multi-dimensional and/or amorphous data sets, the raw data may be difficult to interpret. Graphical representations such as pie charts, bar charts, scatter plots, graphs, and similar visual aids can convey the information in a data set more effectively than lists and tables of numbers.
Some data processing applications incorporate their own chart-generating functions, but these functions may be insufficiently flexible to produce effective charts of certain complex data sets. On the other hand, applications with powerful charting functions may require that the data to be charted also be processed by (or at least imported into) the same application. In the latter case, a developer may face extra work moving data from system to system, or configuring the powerful charting application to also perform the desired data manipulations. Furthermore, this work may not be reusable if different data processing or charting functions from another application are to be incorporated into a system.
Existing approaches such as Microsoft's Object Linking and Embedding (“OLE”) permit some interaction between data processing and charting applications, but the interacting entities (e.g. software applications) are tightly coupled and require extensive and detailed knowledge of their partner's internal structures and operations.
A system to decouple data processing activities from chart preparation, and to permit “mix-and-match” selection of desired features, may be of value in this field.
Embodiments of the invention are illustrated by way of example and not by way of limitation in the figures of the accompanying drawings in which like references indicate similar elements. It should be noted that references to “an” or “one” embodiment in this disclosure are not necessarily to the same embodiment, and such references mean “at least one.”
Embodiments of the invention establish a generic protocol and interfaces through which a client provides data and parameters to an arbitrary chart producing service, and receives in return a resource identifier that can be used to retrieve the chart in a commonly-supported format.
Chart producers 140 and 150 may operate on different systems and may require different protocols or interface methods to access their charting functionality. Generic chart interface 160 accommodates these different interfaces, so that data processing application 110 need not implement two (or more) different chart request logic subsystems. The generic interface is independent of both the chart client (which supplies the source data) and the chart producer, so it can be used by any client and can arrange for charts to be prepared by any producer.
The eponymous generic chart interface shown as element 160 in
The client's data and parameters are adapted to a format appropriate for a chart producer (330) and the chart producer is activated (340). The adapted data is provided to the producer (350), which prepares the requested chart (360). The chart is associated with an identifier (370) such as a Uniform Resource Locator (“URL”). In some embodiments, the chart producer may generate a raster graphic image (i.e. an array of pixels described in a format such as the Graphics Interchange Format (“GIF”), Joint Photographic Experts Group (“JPEG”), or Portable Network Graphics (“PNG”)). In other embodiments, the chart producer's output may be converted to a raster graphic format by logic within the generic chart interface. The image may be stored on a resource server (380) such as a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (“HTTP”) server (commonly called a “web server”) so that it can be retrieved via the identifier. Some chart producers may implement an internal resource server, so that the created chart can be retrieved directly from the producer rather than from an auxiliary web server. Finally, the identifier is returned to the client (390).
In some embodiments, the chart client (e.g. data processing application 110) may provide a reference to the chart data through the generic chart interface, instead of providing the data itself. The chart producer may subsequently monitor the referenced data and produce an updated chart if the data changes. Alternatively, the chart client could trigger the production of an updated chart when desired through a function provided by the generic interface. In either situation, a new chart representation could overwrite the old representation at the chart reference identifier, or a new reference identifier could be provided, from which the client could obtain the updated chart.
A chart client can display a chart by adding a Hypertext Markup Language (“HTML”) browser component to its user display. The HTML browser can be configured to retrieve and display data at a URL, where the URL is the chart reference identifier obtained through the generic chart interface. An automatic refresh feature of the HTML browser can be used to present up-to-date charts of dynamically-changing information.
Embodiments of the invention can achieve greater generality and usefulness by providing an abstract way for a client to describe its data and the chart it desires. It is preferred that a generic chart interface avoid imposing data restrictions, and instead provide a flexible data description mechanism so that a client can express the format and structure of its data. To provide the broadest applicability, an interface may accept one or more arbitrarily-dimensioned arrays of data and permit the client to specify mappings between axes of the arrays and features of the chart. Client data may include both numeric data to be represented by a color, size or position of an element of the chart; and textual data, which may be rendered on the chart as a label.
Some embodiments of the invention can interact with chart producers through a programmatic interface of the producer defined in a Common Object Broker Request Architecture (“CORBA”) interface definition. Other interfaces may be defined using Interface Description Languages (“IDLs”) of similar expressiveness. For example, the Component Object Model (“COM”), Distributed Component Object Model (“DCOM”) and NET web services model provide frameworks to support one application's use of some of another application's functionality. By defining a generic chart interface, applications using the interface need not adapt their operations to match the requirements of many different chart producers. Furthermore, if one chart producer becomes unavailable, another producer may be substituted if both producers offer the charting functionality through a common interface.
An embodiment of the invention may be a machine-readable medium having stored thereon instructions which cause a programmable processor to perform operations as described above. In other embodiments, the operations might be performed by specific hardware components that contain hardwired logic. Those operations might alternatively be performed by any combination of programmed computer components and custom hardware components.
A machine-readable medium may include any mechanism for storing or transmitting information in a form readable by a machine (e.g., a computer), including but not limited to Compact Disc Read-Only Memory (CD-ROM), Read-Only Memory (ROM), Random Access Memory (RAM), and Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory (EPROM).
The applications of the present invention have been described largely by reference to specific examples and in terms of particular allocations of functionality to certain hardware and/or software components. However, those of skill in the art will recognize that generic chart generation interfaces can also be implemented by software and hardware that distribute the functions of embodiments of this invention differently than herein described. Such variations and implementations are understood to be captured according to the following claims.
