Data processing: database and file management or data structures – Database design – Data structure types
Reexamination Certificate
1999-04-08
2003-02-11
Hong, Stephen S. (Department: 2176)
Data processing: database and file management or data structures
Database design
Data structure types
C707S793000, C707S793000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06519617
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a computer system, and deals more particularly with a method, system and computer-readable code for modifying a document to reflect transformations that are desired to account for dynamic factors such as a document user's current context (creating an Extensible Markup Language, or XML, dialect), and then dynamically generating a Document Type Definition (DTD) for this XML dialect.
2. Description of the Related Art
“DTD” is an acronym for “Document Type Definition”. In general, a DTD is a definition of the structure of a document encoded in SGML (“Standard Generalized Markup Language”) or an SGML derivative. SGML is an international standard for specifying document structure, which provides for a platform-independent specification of document content and formatting. An SGML derivative is a notation using a subset of the SGML notation. Examples of SGML derivatives are HTML (“HyperText Markup Language”) and XML (“Extensible Markupe Language”). HTML is a subset of SGML that is directed toward document interchange on the World Wide Web (hereinafter, “Web”), and is considered the primary publishing language of the Web. XML is a simplified version of SGML, tailored to structured Web document content. (Refer to ISO 8879, “Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML)”, (1986) for more information on SGML; to “HTML 4.0 Specification, W3C Recommendation, revised on Apr. 24, 1998” which is available on the Web at http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-htm140-19980424, for more information on HTML; and to “Extensible Markup Language (XML), W3C Recommendation Feb. 10, 1998” which is available on the Web at http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-xml-19980210, hereinafter “XML Specification”, for more information on XML.)
A DTD is written using SGML syntax. The DTD is encoded in a file which is intended to be processed, along with the file containing a particular document, by an SGML parser. The DTD tells the parser how to interpret the document which was created according to that DTD. DTDs may be used to describe any document type. For example, suppose a DTD has been created for documents of type “memo”. Memos typically contain “To” and “From” information. The DTD would contain definitional elements for these items, telling the parser that these elements are valid syntax for this document type, as well as defining the syntax of subelements within these elements, etc.
HTML is a popular example of a notation for which an SGML DTD is defined. HTML is used for specifying the content and formatting of Web pages, where a software application commonly referred to as a “Web browser” processes the HTML DTD along with a Web page (i.e. a document encoded in HTML) in the same manner an SGML parser is used for other DTDs and document types. DTDs may also be used with documents encoded in XML. When a user wishes to print or display a document encoded according to an XML DTD, the software (i.e. the parser, compiler or other application) uses the XML DTD file to determine how to process the contents of the XML document.
HTML and XML are tag languages, where specially-designated constructs referred to as “tags” are used to delimit (or “mark up”) information. In the general case, a tag is a keyword that identifies what the data is which is associated with the tag, and is typically composed of a character string enclosed in special characters. “Special characters” means characters other than letters and numbers, which are defined and reserved for use with tags. Special characters are used so that a parser processing the data stream will recognize that this a tag. A tag is normally inserted preceding its associated data: a corresponding tag may also be inserted following the data, to clearly identify where that data ends. As an example of using tags, the syntax “<p>” in HTML indicates the beginning of a paragraph. In XML, “<email>” could be used as a tag to indicate that the character string appearing in the data stream after this tag is to be treated as an e-mail address; the syntax “</email>” would then be inserted after the character string, to delimit where the e-mail character string ends.
XML is an “extensible” markup language in that it provides users the capability to define their own tags. This makes XML a very powerful language that enables users to easily define a data model, which may change from one document to another. When an application generates the tags (and corresponding data) for a document according to a particular XML data model and transmits that document to another application that also understands this data model, the XML notation functions as a conduit, enabling a smooth transfer of information from one application to the other. By parsing the tags of the data model from the received document, the receiving application can re-create the information for display, printing, or other processing, as the generating application intended it. Conversely, HTML uses a particular set of predefined tags, and is therefore not a user-extensible language.
XML is a well-formed notation, meaning that all opening tags have corresponding closing tags (with the exception of a special “empty” tag, which is both opened and closed by a single tag, such as “<email/>”), and each tag that nests within another tag is closed before the outer tag is closed. HTML, on the other hand, is not a well-formed notation. Some HTML tags do not require closing tags, and nested tags are not required to follow the strict requirements as described for XML (that is, in HTML a tag may be opened within a first outer tag, and closed within a different outer tag).
A parser for SGML or an SGML derivative may create a Document Object Model (hereinafter, “DOM”) tree representation of an input document during the parsing process. The Document Object Model is a language-independent application programming interface (“API”) for use with documents specified in SGML or a derivative of SGML. In particular, DOM is intended for use with HTML and XML. DOM is published as a Recommendation of the World Wide Web Consortium, titled “Document Object Model (DOM) Level 1 Specification, Version 1.0” (1998) and available on the World Wide Web at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-DOM-Level-1.
The DOM API enables application programs to access a tree-oriented abstraction of a document. It is this tree-oriented form that is created from the XML document by an XML parser. An application program can manipulate document structure and contents (that is, by changing, deleting, and/or adding elements in the DOM tree). Further, the DOM enables navigating the structure of the document by navigating the corresponding tree. While the term “document” is used herein when discussing XML (and the corresponding DOM trees), it is to be understood that the information represented using XML may represent any type of information, and is not limited to the traditional interpretation of the word “document”. For example, XML may be used to represent the layout of records in a data repository, the layout of a user interface for an application program, or the data to be used with a program or to be used as the values of records in a repository. For ease of reference, the term “document” will be used herein to refer to these diverse types of information. “DOM tree” refers to the logical structure with which a document is modeled using the DOM. A DOM tree is a hierarchical representation of the document structure and contents. Each valid DOM tree has a root node and one or more leaf nodes, with zero or more intermediate nodes, using the terminology for tree structures that is commonly known in the computer programming art. A node's predecessor node in the tree is called a “parent” and nodes below a given node in the tree are called “child” nodes.
When an XML parser processes an input document, it reads the document and constructs a DOM tree based on the syntax of the tags embedded in the document and the interrelationships between those tags. The tag syntax is stored in the nodes of the DOM
Wanderski Michael C.
Wesley Ajamu A.
Doubet Marcia L.
Hong Stephen S.
Huynh Thu V.
Ray-Yarletts Jeanine S.
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