Patent ID: 7941460

Claim:
A computer-implemented method, comprising: receiving a data flow diagram including one or more operators, wherein each operator includes at least one of an incoming arc and an outgoing arc; and for each operator, for each incoming arc, receiving an arc input actual schema that includes a first portion that is to be operated on by the operator and a second portion that is preserved context that is not to be operated on by the operator and that includes a context pointer that points to a context node in the first portion; and validating that an arc input formal schema is compatible with a schema rooted in the context node in the first portion in the arc input actual schema by determining whether names of nodes in the arc input formal schema and the schema rooted in the context node match, wherein the validating uses a set of formal-to-actual bindings to match the nodes of the arc input formal schema and the schema rooted in the context node in the arc input actual schema; and for each outgoing arc, computing an arc output formal schema based on operator logic and operator inputs; and computing an arc output actual schema with the first portion and the second portion that is preserved context from the arc input actual schema by replacing the context node in the first portion of the arc input actual schema with the arc output formal schema.