US Patent:
20070288918, Dec 13, 2007
Inventors:
Christopher Gouge - Bellevue WA, US
James Masson - Bothell WA, US
Theodore VanZwol - Kirkland WA, US
Michael Day - Seattle WA, US
Assignee:
MICROSOFT CORPORATION - Redmond WA
International Classification:
G06F 9/445
Abstract:
A system and method are disclosed for creating and describing a configurable data set, configuring the data set and merging a resulting configured data set into a target data set. One or more configurable data elements are stored in a configurable data set that forms part of a configurable merge module. The configurable merge module also includes metadata concerning the configurable data. The metadata describes the data elements and how they can be configured and how to implement changes to the configurable data. Each configurable data element can be presented to the configurable merge module consumer through a user interface. The configurable merge module consumer can thus make configuration choices. Also provided is a transformation engine for customizing the configurable data based on configurable merge module consumer choices and a merge engine for inserting configured data into a target data set.