Projecting native application programming interfaces of an operating system into other programming languages

US8695021B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• Microsoft Corporation · US

Inventors

• Harold L. Pierson, III · Redmond, US
• Brent Rector · Redmond, US
• Martyn S. Lovell · Seattle, US
• Mahesh Prakriya · Redmond, US
• Stephen C. Rowe · Bellevue, US
• Tassaduq Basu · Redmond, US
• Robert A. Wlodarczyk · Issaquah, US
• Elliot H. Omiya · Kirkland, US
• Jerry Dunietz · Seattle, US
• Ales Holecek · Kirkland, US
• Lawrence W. Osterman · Woodinville, US
• Wei Zeng · Sammamish, US
• Neeraj N. Wadhwa · Kirkland, US
• Shakeel I. Solkar · Sammamish, US
• Michael Aksionkin · Kirkland, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Aug 31, 2011
• Grant date: Apr 8, 2014
• Expiry date: Aug 31, 2031

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G06F8/36
• WIPO field: Computer technology
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

Information about the operating system application programming interfaces is stored in a known format in a known location. This information fully describes the APIs exposed by the operating system and is stored in API metadata files. A language compiler or interpreter uses this API information to build a natural and familiar representation of the native system API in the target language. The language compiler or interpreter can read the API information at compile time and/or runtime. The metadata is used to allow an application to refer to named elements in the API. Projections are built that use the metadata to map named elements in the API to named elements in the target language, and to define wrappers that marshal data of those elements between the target representation and the native operating system representation.