Structured document customizable comparison systems and methods

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9489381-B1
Application number	US-201213539231-A
Country	US
Kind code	B1
Filing date	Jun 29, 2012
Priority date	Jun 30, 2008
Publication date	Nov 8, 2016
Grant date	Nov 8, 2016

Abstract

Multiple structured documents can be compared with one another utilizing user-specified custom configurations. For example, a traversal of at least two of the documents may identify one or more potential matches in the documents. A user-defined rule may be obtained that specifies differences that are expected within the documents. Additionally, a determination may be made regarding when differences between potential matches are significant based in part on user-defined rule. In some examples, significant differences may be determined to be significant as a result of being differences, other than expected differences, that vary from the expected differences. Any significant differences can be logged, reported on or added to statistics for the new service being tested.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. One or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing computer-executable instructions for comparing two structured documents that, when executed by one or more processors, configure the one or more processors to perform operations comprising:
identifying, by performing a traversal of a first structure in a first document and a second structure in a second document, one or more potential matches between elements in the first and second documents;
obtaining, from a user, specified custom rules defining expected differences between the first and second documents, the expected differences indicating a positional change between at least one actual element positioned within a first hierarchical arrangement of the first document and at least one expected element positioned within a second hierarchical arrangement of the second document;
determining when differences between the identified potential matches are significant based at least in part on the custom rules, wherein significant differences are determined to be significant as a result of being differences, other than expected differences, that vary from the expected differences; and
effecting data storage for the at least one difference that is determined to be significant.

2. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 1 , wherein the traversing determines matches in the first and second documents independent of variations in ordering of the first and second structures.

3. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 1 , wherein the instructions, when executed, further configure the one or more processors to perform operations comprising identifying transient problems as insignificant problems.

4. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 1 , wherein the instructions, when executed, further configure the one or more processors to perform operations comprising ranking significant differences over multiple instances of comparison between the first and second documents.

5. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 1 , wherein the instructions, when executed, further configure the one or more processors to perform operations comprising collecting statistics for the significant differences between a pair of elements in a potential match at a respective location over multiple instances of comparison between the first document and the second document.

6. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 1 , wherein the instructions, when executed, further configure the one or more processors to perform operations comprising invoking a custom asserter component for each of at least a subset of the potential matches at a respective location to determine when the differences between the elements are significant at a time after a custom asserter component is specified by the user or invoking a default asserter component for each of at least a subset of the potential matches at a respective location to determine when the differences between the elements exist at a time after a custom asserter component is not specified by the user.

7. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 1 , wherein the instructions, when executed, further configure the one or more processors to perform operations comprising filtering out differences determined to be statistically insignificant.

8. A method for comparing two structured documents, comprising:
receiving information for a first document and a second document to be compared;
traversing a first structure in the first document and a second structure in the second document to identify one or more potential matches between elements in the first and second documents;
receiving, from a user, a request to specify at least custom rules defining expected differences between the first and second documents, the expected differences indicating a positional change between at least one actual element of the first document and at least one expected element of the second document, the first document having a first structure defining a first hierarchical arrangement of elements within the first document that includes the at least one actual element positioned within the first structure, the second document having a second structure defining a second hierarchical arrangement of elements within the second document that includes the at least one expected element positioned within the second structure, the expected differences indicating a structural difference between the first structure of the first document and the second structure of the second document;
determining when differences between the identified potential matches are significant based at least in part on the custom rules, wherein significant differences are determined to be significant as a result of being differences that vary from the expected differences; and
storing information for the at least one difference that is determined to be significant, according to configuration information specified by the user.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein determining matches in the first and second documents occurs independently of variations in ordering of the first and second structures.

10. The method of claim 8 , wherein each of at least a subset of the identified potential matches is between a respective pair of elements including the actual element of the first document and the expected element of the second document.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein the respective pair of elements correspond to a respective location in the first and second structures of the first and second documents.

12. The method of claim 10 , further comprising, in response to a determination that there is at least one difference between the respective pair of elements, invoking a custom asserter to determine whether the at least one difference is significant as defined based at least in part by the custom rules of the custom asserter when the custom asserter is specified by the user.

13. The method of claim 8 , further comprising collecting statistics for the at least one significant difference between the respective pair of elements in a potential match at a respective location over multiple instances of comparison between the first and second documents.

14. A system for comparing a first document and a second document, comprising:
at least one processor configured to execute:
an asserter configuration module configured to receive, from a user, a request including custom rules defining at least one expected difference that indicates a positional change between at least one actual element of a first document and at least one expected element of a second document, the first document having a first structure defining a first hierarchical arrangement of elements within the first document that includes the at least one actual element positioned within the first structure, the second document having a second structure defining a second hierarchical arrangement of elements within the second document that includes the at least one expected element positioned within the second structure, the at least one expected difference including an expected structural difference between the first structure and the second structure, and the asserter configuration module configured to update the custom rules based at least in part on the received request;
a document traversing module for traversing the first structure in the first document and the second structure in the second document to identify one or more potential matches between elements in the first and second documents, the document traversing module being configured to determine when differences between the elements are significant as defined by the custom rules

Assignees

• Sun Vanessa Y
• Agrawal Neeraj
• Amazon Tech Inc

Inventors

• Sun Vanessa Y
• Agrawal Neeraj

Classifications

• G06F16/93 Primary

  Document management systems · CPC title

• G06F16/84 Primary

  Mapping; Conversion · CPC title

• G06F40/221

  Parsing markup language streams (streaming G06F40/149) · CPC title

• G06F40/194

  Calculation of difference between files · CPC title

• G06F17/2247

  Physics · mapped topic