Mechanism for maintaining data format synchronization between different entities

[0001] The present invention relates in general to communication systems and subsystems thereof, and is particularly directed to a software data interface technique that allows a first communication application program to retrieve data from a second communication application program, irrespective of whether or not the data formats employed by the two communication application programs are mutually compatible.

[0002] The communications industry has available to it a number of software application programs that allow an operator to model a radio communication network. As a non-limiting example, the Radio Programming Application (RPA) software application created by Harris Corp.—the assignee of the present application—captures data supplied by an operator, the data typically including details such as, but not limited to, exact radio names, radio types, RF network connectivity, IP network connectivity, telephony network connectivity and the like. Many of these details are also needed by other radio communication software applications, such as but not limited to Harris Wireless Message Terminal (WMT), Harris Tactical Chat® IP and Harris RF-6010 Network Management Application, each of which is operated by the assignee of the present application. One brute force and very time consuming mechanism to configure each application with the parameters necessary for its operation would be to have a user enter all of the necessary data into each application.

[0003] In accordance with the present invention, there is provided a communication software data interfacing technique that significantly relieves the above user burden, by means of a software data interface or intermediate data conversion mechanism that makes data available in an application-independent data format previously agreed to by users of multiple applications. To this end, the supplier of shared data provides an agreed to set of known entry points for accessing the shareable data in the same file as the data itself. In accordance with preferred, but non-limiting, embodiment, the well known entry points employ XML (extensible markup language) nodes with an agreed upon labeling convention. These nodes may be identified as CDQ (which is an abbreviation of the phrase “common data query,” which is a technical abbreviation for this method). Each node has a plurality of attributes, including a version (“version”), a type (“type”) and a name (“name”). Thus, an example of a node would be the statement: <CDQ name=“Station General Query” type=“xsl” version=“1.0”>. The set of named queries that is included with any given data set is agreed to by both the supplier and the consumer of the shared data. The consumer agrees to access the data in the file exclusively through this set of ‘intermediate’ queries, rather than directly retrieving the data.

[0004] Given this set of queries for representing access points for a respective set of data, a consumer may access the data by opening the data file and then locating the query of interest, using the “name”, “type” and “version” identifiers previously agreed upon during a preliminary contract negotiation session among all users of the technique. In addition, the consumer decompresses contents of the node using an agreed upon compression/decompression standard. For queries of type “XSL”, the result of the decompression step is an extensible stylesheet language template (XSLT) stylesheet through which the entire data file is to be processed (using the consumer's choice of XSLT processor). This stylesheet, together with any consumer supplied arguments, is defined as a “Query Input.” The result of XSLT processing of the Query Input is termed a “Query Output.” For XML type queries, the result of the decompression step is the Query Output directly. The consumer then extracts the data from the Query Output and closes the data file.

[0005] More particularly, considering an overview of the methodology of the present invention, as a first step, an arbitrary first version of a first application program stores shared data that is needed by a second application program. Within the first version of the first application program, data is stored in a first format. For an updated or more recent version of the first of application program, data is stored in a corresponding updated format. For successful data exchange between programs, the second application program must be data exchange-compatible with the first application program. Namely, it is necessary for the second application program to be able to read the data files generated by the first application program, irrespective of the version of the first application program. This means that the second application program must be able to retrieve data from files stored in any format, which could be generated by some version of the first application program. For this purpose an application-independent ‘intermediate’ data format, termed F_exchange is agreed upon by the creators of all application programs that will have access to the shared data. To this end, the second application program is created to ‘read’ data in this agreed upon intermediate data format F_exchange. A key feature of the present invention is the fact that whenever a data file is created by the first application program, associated instructions necessary to convert from any arbitrary format to the F_exchange format are inserted into the data file generated by the particular version of the first application program. These conversion instructions are accessible by the second application program upon accessing the data file of interest. Then, whenever the second application program needs to read data that has been generated by the first application program, the second application program retrieves intermediate F_i-to-F_exchange conversion instructions that were created and inserted within that data file contained within the first application program and proceeds to execute the conversion steps described by those instructions, thereby successfully accessing the data from the first application program.

[0009] Before detailing the application independent shared data retrieval methodology for fully synchronously interfacing data between disparate (radio communication) application programs in accordance with the present invention, it should be observed that the invention resides primarily in a prescribed novel software program that is readily executed via conventional digital processing circuits and components. Consequently, the configurations of such circuits and components and the manner in which they may interface with radio equipment making use of the invention have been shown in the drawings by readily understandable flow charts and associated block diagrams, which show only those specific aspects that are pertinent to the present invention, so as not to obscure the disclosure with details which will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art having the benefit of the description herein. Thus, the flowcharts and diagrammatic illustrations are primarily intended to show the major components of the invention in convenient functional groupings, whereby the present invention may be more readily understood.

[0010] Attention is initially directed to FIG. 1, which is a flow chart showing a general overview of the shared data interface employed by the present invention for the case of two arbitrary application programs A₁ and A₂, which do not necessarily have data exchange compatibility with one another. It should be understood that the invention is not limited to use with only two or any other number of application programs. The number two has been selected as a non-limiting example, to facilitate an understanding of the principles and operation of the invention without unduly burdening the textual description. It will be readily understood that the invention can be readily expanded to a larger number of users of the shared data by implementing the routine described herein among respective pairs of users, so long as all users are included.

[0011] Initially, as a first step 101, an arbitrary first version V₁ of the first application program A₁ stores, in various files, shared data that is needed by one or more other applications, here by the second application program A₂. Within version V₁ of application program A₁, data is stored in a first format F₁. For an updated version V₂ of program A₁ data is stored in an associated updated format F₂. As pointed out above, the second application program A₂ is required to be data exchange-compatible with application program A₁; namely, as shown at step 102, it is necessary for program A₂ to be able to read the data files generated by program A₁, regardless of the version V_i of program A₁. This means that in order for step 102 to be successfully executed, program A₂ must be able to retrieve data from files stored in any of the formats (F₁, F₂, . . . , F_N) which could be generated by some version of program A₁. In order for the steps 101 and 102 of the overview flow diagram of FIG. 1 to be successfully completed, the routine shown in FIG. 2 is executed.

[0012] At a first step 201, an application-independent ‘intermediate’ data format, F_exchange is agreed upon by the creators of all application programs (programs A₁ and A₂ in the present example). In step 202 application program A₂ is created to ‘read’ data in this agreed upon intermediate data format F_exchange. Next, in step 203, whenever a data file is created by application program A₁, associated instructions necessary to convert from any arbitrary format F_i to format F_exchange are inserted into the data file generated by version V_i of application program A₁. As represented by step 204, these conversion instructions are accessible by application program A₂ upon accessing the data file of interest. Then, whenever, as shown at step 205, application program A₂ needs to read data that has been generated by application program A₁, program A₂ retrieves the intermediate F_i-to-F_exchange conversion instructions that were created and inserted within that data file, and proceeds to execute the conversion steps described by those instructions, thereby successfully accessing the data.

[0013] A non-limiting example showing the manner in various technical parameters associated with reading data employed in a radio communication network in implementing the steps of the flow diagram of FIG. 2 will now be described with reference to the flow diagram of FIGS. 3A-3D. At first step 301 (which corresponds to step 201 of the flow diagram of FIG. 2), a public interface used to access data stored in files generated by the first application program A₁ is defined, published and distributed to the makers of application program A₂. As a non-limiting example, in step 301 a VHF UHF Radio Programming Application (RPA) public interface provided by the assignee of the present application is generated to produce a set of data queries. For purposes of reducing the complexity of the present description only two of these queries are shown as Query #1 and Query #2 within intermediate format block 311. The format is an intermediate XML (extensible markup language) format conformed with by the public interface queries can be defined using any appropriate means, including (but not limited to) XML schema, DTD or example XML tree fragments.

[0014] Next, at step 302, application program A₂ is modified, in accordance with steps 202 and 205 described above with reference to FIG. 2 on the one hand, and in conformance with the public interface of step 301, to access data from the files generated by application program A₁, described above. Specifically, in step 303, the target data sought by application program A₂ is readily obtainable by executing one or more of the queries in the public interface supported by application program A₁. Then, in step 304, the data from these multiple queries is combined to provide application program A₂ with the full data set it needs. In particular, as shown at associated block 314, a Wireless Messaging Terminal (WMT) routine will use both the “Station General Query” (Query #1) and the “Network General Query” (Query #2) of query block 311 associated with the execution of step 301, described above. As a result of this data file access, application program A₂ is now capable of importing data from application program A₁, as shown at step 305.

[0015] At step 306, an arbitrary user (user₁) of application program A₁ executes that program. In practical terms this is shown at associated block 316, wherein a military communications officer launches an instantiation of the VHF UHF RPA on his personal computer (PC), as by clicking upon an associated icon 326. Next, at step 307, user₁ enters data into the application program A₁, that he is running on his PC. As diagrammatically illustrated in the example of block 317, the communications officer (user₁) enters data into the RPA about a planned radio network the components and operational parameters of which are shown as being surrounded by broken lines 327.

[0016] Next, at step 308, user₁ instructs his currently active application program A₁ to save data to a file “DataFile₁”. This operation is represented in block 318 by the communications officer clicking on the “Save File” icon 328 on his PC's graphical user interface (GUI) toolbar, and enters the filename to which to save the data, which is denoted here as “Plan1.vpd.” Next, in step 309, application program A₁ stores user data in format F₁ which, in the present example, is XML-based, as described above. As shown by block 319, the RPA generates a filed containing XML. Then, at step 310, pursuant to the invention, for each entry-point in the public interface, application program A₁ appends conversion instructions to the end of the user data (within the file). In addition, within step 310, these instructions are captured in the form of extensible style sheet language template (XSLT) stylesheets, and are contained by uniquely identified XML nodes within the XML document. As described briefly above, in accordance with the present invention, each stylesheet is specifically crafted so as to transform the data from the schema used by the file containing the stylesheet itself into the intermediate schema defined and published at step 301. It will be readily appreciated that the stylesheets from two different versions of the same application will differ to the degree that the schema used by each version V_i of the application to capture the data is different. Block 320 shows the manner in which XML nodes may be created after the user has written to the file.

[0017] At step 331, user₁ distributes the file to user₂. In practical terms, as shown at block 341, the file is sent via email from a first communications officer at one location to a second communications officer at another location. Next, in step 332, user₂ proceeds to execute application program A₂. This is pragmatically represented by block 342, which diagrammatically illustrates the second communications officer (user₂) launching an (RF-6010) Network Management Application (NMA) on his PC by clicking on an associated ICON 352.

[0018] Following the launching of the second application program (Network Management Application in the present example), in step 333, user₂ instructs the application to load data from the file that has been obtained from user₁. This action is diagrammatically illustrated in block 343, by the second communications officer clicking on the load file icon 353 on the toolbar, and selecting the file of interest “Plan1.VPD.” In response to this action, the routine transitions to step 334, wherein application program A₂ searches the file, looking for the entry-points of interest, as identified by XML nodes with expected attributes within the XML document. This action is diagrammatically illustrated in block 344. which depicts the NMA locating the XML node in the document which contains the Network General Query using the designated XPATH query shown at 354. For each entry point found, the second application program A₂ performs a number of operations 361-365, for which there is an associated result block 371, as follows.

[0019] As shown at step 361, the second application program A₂ retrieves the XSLT stylesheet contained as a child node of the entry-point XML node. At step 362, application program A₂ provides the entire file as a ‘source’ document to an XSLT engine. At step 363, the application program A₂ provides the XSLT stylesheet retrieved as the stylesheet to an XSLT transformation engine. At step 364, application program A₂ retrieves the output of executing the stylesheet on the data file of interest. At step 365, the second application program A₂ proceeds to parse the data in this output and populates internal A₂ databases.

[0020] Once steps 361-365 have been completed, then in step 366, the second application program A₂ will display the results based upon the data it has imported from the accessed file. This operation is diagrammatically illustrated at block 376, wherein the network management application updates the GUI to show the imported station and network list.

[0021] As will be appreciated from the foregoing description, the present invention is operative to relieve a user from having to reenter data for each of a plurality of different application programs that may share data, by means of a software data interface or intermediate data conversion mechanism that stores data in an application-independent data format previously agreed to by users of multiple applications. The supplier of the shared data provides an agreed to set known entry points for accessing the shareable data in the same file as the data itself. In accordance with preferred, but non-limiting, embodiment, the well known entry points may employ XML nodes with an agreed upon labeling convention. These nodes may be identified as “common data query” and each node has a plurality of attributes, including a “version”, a “type” and a “name”. The set of named queries that is included with any given data set is agreed to by both the supplier and the consumer of the shared data. The consumer agrees to access the data in the file exclusively through this set of ‘intermediate’ queries, rather than directly retrieving the data.

[0022] For this purpose an application-independent ‘intermediate’ data format, termed F_exchange is agreed upon by the creators of all application programs that will have access to the shared data. To this end, a second application program is created to ‘read’ data in this agreed upon intermediate data format F_exchange. A key feature of the present invention is the fact that whenever a data file is created by a first application program associated instructions necessary to convert from any arbitrary format to the F_exchange format are inserted into the data file generated by the particular version of the first application program. These conversion instructions are accessible by the second application program upon accessing the data file of interest. Then, whenever the second application program needs to read data that has been generated by the first application program, the second application program retrieves intermediate F_i-to-F_exchange conversion instructions that were created and inserted within that data file contained within the first application program, and proceeds to execute the conversion steps described by those instructions, thereby successfully accessing the data from the first application program.

[0023] While we have shown and described an embodiment in accordance with the present invention, it is to be understood that the same is not limited thereto but is susceptible to numerous changes and modifications as known to a person skilled in the art. We therefore do not wish to be limited to the details shown and described herein, but intend to cover all such changes and modifications as are obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art.