780results about "Distributed object oriented systems" patented technology

A system, method, and article of manufacture are provided for delivering service via a locally addressable interface. A plurality of globally addressable interfaces and a plurality of locally addressable interfaces are provided. Access is allowed to a plurality of different sets of services from each of the globally addressable interfaces and the locally addressable interface. Each interface has a unique set of services associated therewith. The globally addressable interfaces are registered in a naming service for facilitating access thereto. Use of the locally addressable interfaces is permitted only via the globally addressable interfaces or another locally addressable interface.

A system and method for searching for documents within spaces in a distributed computing environment are provided. A client sends a lookup message to a space which stores documents. The lookup message may specify desired characteristics, such as a name or partial XML schema, of the stored documents. The documents may include XML service advertisements and XML device advertisements as well as general-purpose XML documents. A set of zero or more documents which match the lookup message are discovered. In one embodiment, the lookup message may include a desired name. If the lookup message includes both a desired name and a desired schema, the set of discovered documents may include both discovered documents having a name that matches the desired name and discovered documents having a schema that matches the desired schema. If the lookup message includes neither a desired name nor a desired schema, the set of discovered documents may include substantially all the documents stored in the space. After the matching documents are found, the space may send a lookup response message to the client. For each discovered document, the lookup response message may include a name and an advertisement. Each advertisement may include information which is usable by the client to obtain the respective discovered document or access the resource (e.g., a service) that the document advertises. The advertisements and messages may be expressed in a data representation language such as XML.

A highly mobile, ambient computing environment is disclosed for serving a knowledge worker away from the their desk. The present invention allows a knowledge worker to get increased leverage from personal, networked, and interactive computing devices while in their car, airplane seat, or in a conference room with others. An Open Agent Architecture is used to incorporate elements such as GPS agents, speech recognition, and opportunistic connectivity among meeting participants. Communication and cooperation between agents are brokered by one or more facilitators, which are responsible for matching requests, from users and agents, with descriptions of the capabilities of other agents. It is not generally required that a user or agent know the identities, locations, or number of other agents involved in satisfying a request, and relatively minimal effort is involved in incorporating new agents and “wrapping” legacy applications. Extreme flexibility is achieved through an architecture organized around the declaration of capabilities by service-providing agents, the construction of arbitrarily complex goals by users and service-requesting agents, and the role of facilitators in delegating and coordinating the satisfaction of these goals, subject to advice and constraints that may accompany them.

A distributed agent community is able to dynamically interact with alternative sofware technologies that manage distributed objects. The leveraging of capabilities of distributed object systems greatly expands the flexibility and capabilites of the distributed agent community. Through access to distributed object systems, the distributed agent community can draw on the capabilites of all the objects managed by the distributed object systems. The access to distributed systems by the distributed agent community allows for collaboration and intelligent planning that the distributed object systems do not themsleves provide.

A system and method for providing an improved namespace and object description system for enterprise management are disclosed. The system and method employ a hierarchical namespace with objects including prototypes and instances where an instance inherits traits from a prototype, such as attribute values and / or child objects.

A method and system for leasing storage locations in a distributed processing system is provided. Consistent with this method and system, a client requests access to storage locations for a period of time (lease period) from a server, such as the file system manager. Responsive to this request, the server invokes a lease period algorithm, which considers various factors to determine a lease period during which time the client may access the storage locations. After a lease is granted, the server sends an object to the client that advises the client of the lease period and that provides the client with behavior to modify the lease, like canceling the lease or renewing the lease. The server supports concurrent leases, exact leases, and leases for various types of access. After all leases to a storage location expire, the server reclaims the storage location.

Embodiments of message gates are described. A message gate is the message endpoint for a client or service in a distributed computing environment. A message gate may provide a secure endpoint that sends and receives type-safe messages. Gates may perform the sending and receiving of messages between clients and services using a protocol specified in a service advertisement. In one embodiment, the messages are eXtensible Markup Language (XML) messages. For a client, a message gate represents the authority to use some or all of a service's capabilities. Each capability may be expressed in terms of a message that may be sent to the service. Creation of a message gate may involve an authentication service that generates an authentication credential, and that may negotiate the desired level of security and the set of messages that may be passed between client and service. A message gate may perform verification of messages against a message schema to ensure that the messages are allowed. Message gates may embed the authentication credential in outgoing messages so that the receiving message gate may authenticate the message. Messages may also include information to allow the receiving gate to verify that the message has not been compromised prior to receipt.

Systems and methods for returning results of services within a distributed computing environment are provided. After a client invokes one or more functions of a service, results of the function(s) may be returned to the client in a plurality of ways: for example, in a message, in a space (e.g., a network-addressable storage location), in a space wherein the client is notified via an event, using an advertisement returned in a message, using an advertisement returned in a space, and using an advertisement returned in a space wherein the client is notified via an event. The advertisement may include the information necessary to access and read the results in a storage location such as a space. A schema for the service may specify a plurality of messages which are usable to invoke the function(s) of the service. The messages, results, and advertisements may be expressed in a platform-independent and / or programming-language-independent data representation language such as XML. The availability of these plurality of methods may enhance the flexibility and adaptability of the distributed computing environment for a variety of situations, such as for clients having differing capabilities. For additional flexibility, results may also be efficiently passed to another service.

A method and system for accelerating receipt of data in a client-to-client network. The method includes the steps of intercepting queries and responses, storing the intercepted queries and responses in an acceleration server and transmitting the intercepted responses to clients submitting intercepted queries. The system includes at least one acceleration server designed and configured to perform the steps included in the method.

Task Computing computer system by segmenting the system into a plurality of implementation tiers of a presentation layer, a remote procedure call programming interface (API), a middleware layer to which the presentation layer interfaces via the remote procedure call API to real-time, dynamically generate a computer implemented task interface at the presentation layer to a semantically described source of function as a service on a computer system, and a service layer and a function source realization layer providing the semantically described source of function as the service on the computer system to which the middleware layer interfaces. Real-time and dynamically composing an executable task that comprises one or more services using the generated task interface at the presentation layer to one or more services on the computer based upon the semantically described application-, device- and service-rich computer.

Methods, systems, and computer program products are disclosed for dynamically integrating software resources (such as web services and other back-end software resources) using the services of a content framework (such as a portal platform). A portlet model is leveraged to allow programmatic portlets to serve as proxies for web services, thereby extending portlets beyond their traditional visual role. A deployment interface and a system interface are described for these portlet proxies. The deployment interface is used for composing new web services, and a composition tool is described. The system interface allows for run-time management of the web services by the portal platform. The service provider for a particular finction may be bound to the portlet proxy at development time or at run-time.

An architecture for integrating data between a plurality of software applications in a factory environment comprises a factory system and a domain application. The factory system comprises a domain object superclass and at least two first-level subclasses of the domain object superclass. An instantiation of one of the first-level subclasses corresponds to a domain object, which represents an item in a factory. The factory system also includes a service, which provides an operation related to the domain object. The service comprises at least one component, where each component is operable to perform the operation related to the domain object. The architecture also includes a domain application, which implements a component of the service of the factory system to perform the operation related to the domain object. The architecture can optionally include a system manager for managing hardware and software in the factory.

In a system where client and server components (or actors) of an application are organized as complementary hierarchical graphs, a method and apparatus for creating server applications and dynamically deploying server applications on a client system are described. The server graph comprises, as a minimum, server nodes corresponding to the union of all possible client nodes, whereas each client graph corresponds to a subset of the related server nodes. The server graph is a compound tree from which all possible combinations of client trees can be dynamically created. At a desired time, for example, when the client requests for a client tree representation, the server creates the client tree representation using a peeling process to determine which nodes in the server actor tree should be included in the client tree representation. The peeling process involves determining the server actor nodes that meet a set of criteria for the particular client. The generated client tree structure contains objects that are shipped via a secured communication interface to the client in a tree structure.

In a distributed computing environment, a message gate may be the message endpoint for a client or service to communicate with another client or service. Devices may have a gate factory (e.g. message endpoint constructor) that is trusted code on the device for generating gates based on XML message descriptions. The use of the gate factory may ensure that the gate it generates is also trusted code, and that the code is correct with respect to a service advertisement. A service advertisement may indicate, for a particular service, a message schema, service URI and authentication service URI. In one embodiment, the pieces the gate factory needs to construct a gate are the XML schema of the service and the URI of the service. In another embodiment, an authentication credential may also be obtained and used in gate construction by running an authentication service specified in the service advertisement. A gate factory for a device may generate gate code that may incorporate the language, security, type safety, and / or execution environment characteristics of the local device platform. By constructing gates itself, a device has the ability to ensure that the generated gate code is relatively bug-free, produces only valid data, and provides type-safety.

A system and method for providing message-based leasing of resources in a distributed computing environment. Services may issue leases to clients and provide operations on those leases. The lease functionality of a service may be defined in an XML message schema. Gates may be used to perform lease operations. Leases may be granted for a period that may be negotiated. Leasing messages for performing leasing operations may be defined. The leasing messages may include messages to renew a lease and to cancel a lease. Services may specify an address where leasing messages may be sent. A lease renewal mechanism may be provided in which a gate may receive lease renewal messages and automatically respond to them. A mechanism to detect stale advertisements in a space may be provided. When a service publishes its advertisement in a space, the service obtains a lease on the publishing of its advertisement. Each advertisement may include a time by which the service may renew the advertisement. When the lease is not renewed, the space service marks the service advertisement as stale. Services renew advertisements by sending a renewal message to the space. Stale service advertisements may be deleted after a period. A space service may allow clients to lease service advertisements in the space to thus grant clients access to the services. Messages are described for accessing the leasing services provided by the space services.

A system and method for searching for Internet-based repositories within a distributed computing environment are provided. A client on a device may interact with a search service on the same or a different device to find spaces (i.e., network-accessible XML object repositories) for storage and / or retrieval of data. The client may send an XML search request to the search service. The search request may include one or more desired characteristics, such as keywords, which are sought of a space. Based upon the search request, the search service may generate search results including locations (e.g., URIs) of one or more resulting spaces. The spaces may include web pages. In generating the search results, the search service may interact with a network-accessible third-party search engine, such as a browser-accessible search engine. The search service may obtain a service advertisement for each of the resulting spaces. Each service advertisement includes information which is usable to access the respective space. The search service may send the search results, including the advertisements and / or URIs, to the client to enable the client to access the resulting spacees at their respective locations. The search service may store the search results in a results space and send the address of the results space to the client.

An architecture for extending the Java security model to allow a user or administrator to grant permissions dynamically. By itself, the Java 2 security model does not allow additions to the collections of policy permissions after they have been loaded from the Java policy file. The inventive architecture allows Java applets and applications to dynamically prompt the user to grant a permission that does not exist in the Java policy file. If the user grants the permission, the present invention grants the permission for the ProtectionDomain to which the class asking for the permission belongs. Attributes for the dynamic permission may be set during runtime and saved across browser sessions.

A metadata-aware Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) framework for an application server environment. The framework allows the connector writer to connect to a system using a low-level API. The framework provides a space in a connector in which to define high-level functions. Using the framework, the user can mine metadata for the functions and generate a description of each high-level function that can be dropped into the framework and appear as a high-level function invokable through the connector. This high-level function manifestation, when invoked, drives the low-level API provided by the connector. An adaptive layer may wrap a native Common Client Interface (CCI) exposed by a connector to provide an abstract connector that allows a higher-level abstraction of external Enterprise Information Systems (EIS). The adaptive layer may interpret metadata to model an external EIS as a logical data source. The adaptive layer may be referred to as a metadata-aware CCI adapter.

A configuration system for a process plant uses module class objects to assist in configuring, organizing and changing the control and display activities within the process plant. Each module class object generically models or represents a process entity, such as a unit, a piece of equipment, a control activity, etc., and may be used to create instances of the object, called module objects, which represent and are tied to specific equipment within the process plant. The module class objects may represent process entities of any desired scope, which means that a single module class object may be used to configure the control and display activities of process entities of any desired scope within the process plant, instead of just at a control module level. In particular, module class objects of a large scope may be used to configure large sections or portions of the process plant, which makes configuration of the process plant easier and less time consuming. A module class object may be a unit module class object reflecting a physical unit within the process plant, an equipment module class object reflecting a physical piece of equipment within the process plant, a control module class object reflecting a control module or scheme within the process plant, or a display module class object reflecting a display routine that provides information to a user within the process plant.

Remote Procedure Call (RPC) is implemented using XML-based message encoding wherein elements in the message corresponding to arguments of the RPC are associated with element type indicators selected from a defined set. The type indicators may allow the message itself to identify structural aspects of the message, particularly useful in the context of array elements, but useful for other types of elements as well.

Various embodiments of a mechanism for a client to specify a display service to be used by a service for displaying data for the client in a distributed computing environment are described. A display service on or associated with the device on which the client resides that the client wishes to use to display the results of the service. When the client runs the service, the client may send a message to the service specifying the service advertisement of the client's display service. The service may then generate a message channel that allows it to send messages to the client's display service. Thus, when displaying results, the service invoked by the client becomes a client of the client's display service and sends its results, directly or by reference, for display to that display service.

A lightweight application server for use on portable or embedded devices includes an application manager and services containers. Each of these is managed by an admin server allowing for remote and rapid deployment and maintenance of applications, objects and features associated with the server-enabled portable or embedded devices. This permits portable devices like PDAs to provide server functionality to each other, in a fully portable network if desired. A system including such server-enabled portable or embedded devices may include, among other things, a decision flow server for facilitating distributed decision flow processing.

A message gate is the message endpoint for a client or service in a distributed computing environment. A message gate may provide a secure message endpoint that sends and receives type-safe messages. A gate may have a gate name that is a unique ID that refers only to the gate. In one embodiment, a gate is assigned a gate name when the gate is created and the gate name refers to only that gate for the life of the gate. A gate may be addressed using its gate name. The name may allow clients and services to migrate about the network and still work together. In a preferred embodiment, the gate address is independent of the physical message transport address and / or socket layer. Thus, a gate name may provide a virtual message endpoint address that may be bound and un-bound to a message transport address.

A service discovery protocol may allow clients in a distributed computing environment to search for services using flexible search criteria. A client may send a search message that may be formatted in a data representational language and may include search criteria. The search criteria may specify a service name or a service type or both a service name and a service type. The search criteria may be compared to advertisements for services within the distributed computing environment to find advertisements that match the search criteria. An advertisement may be a document in the data representation language that provides access information for a corresponding service. The client may receive one or more search response messages indicating one or more advertisements that match the search criteria. The client may obtain and advertisement for a located service and may use the advertisement to construct a message gate to communicate with the service according to messages defined by the advertisement.

A distributed computing environment in which agent processes direct their own movement through a computer network. Place processes provide a computing context within which agent processes are interpreted. An agent process controls its movement from one place process to another within the network by using a ticket. An agent process which moves from one place process to another transports definitions of classes of which objects included in the agent process are members. An agent process which moves from one place process to a second place process avoids unnecessary transportation of objects included in the agent process by substituting equivalent objects which are found in the second place process. An agent process sends clones of the agent process to several place processes simultaneously. If two clones travel along paths which are coextensive for an initial portion thereof, a single clone is transported along the initial portion of the paths and other clones are formed from the single clone, thereby avoiding transferring redundant information along communications media. Two agent processes, which occupy a single place process, interact by exchanging references to one another. The single place process ensures that neither agent process receives a reference to the other agent process without simultaneously giving to the other agent process a reference to the former agent process. Unauthorized or inadvertent excessive use of network resources by an agent process, or a place process, is prevented by associating with each process a permit which defines various capabilities and resource allowances of the process.

A system and method for interaction and access to shared content among clients and services in a distributed computing environment. A client may access a space service. The space service may store one or more XML service advertisements and / or other XML content in a space, and each of the service advertisements may include information which is usable to access and execute a corresponding service. The space service may include an XML schema which specifies one or more messages usable to invoke functions of the space service. For example, the schema may specify methods for reading advertisements from the space and publishing advertisements in the space. In accessing the space service, the client may send information such as an XML message (as specified in the schema) to the space service at an Internet address. In accessing the space service, the client may search the one or more service advertisements stored in the space. The client may select one of the service advertisements from the space. The desired service may be executed on behalf of the client. Upon execution, the service may generate a set of results. In one embodiment, these results may be published in a new space which may be accessed by the client for whose benefit the service was executed.

A device hosting framework provides hosting for software-implemented logical devices (including peripheral devices bridges) on a computer to expose their services as controlled devices per a peer networking protocol. The device hosting framework encapsulates discovery, description and control protocol operations of the peer networking protocol, which frees the developers of the hosted devices from having to individually implement the peer networking protocol in the hosted devices' software and need implement only the core functionality of the hosted device. The device hosting framework operates as a host supporting device interoperability via the peer networking protocol for multiple hosted devices.

Dynamic Multi-sourced Persisted Enterprise Java Bean (EJB) instances are dynamically created on a J2EE compliant Application Server to access data contained in multiple data source systems. This Dynamic Multi-sourced Persisted EJB is a general class responsible for dynamically aggregating source system information and securing it based on a Context definition. Individual EJB attributes that include mapping, caching and security definitions are mapped to individual pieces of data in source systems by the Context definition. A Context definition can be reloaded during execution as desired. Applications can access the Dynamic Multi-sourced Persisted EJB directly, or use a Session EJB to create a static interface to the dynamically mapped, cached and secured data. Using an attribute securing element, a security engine enforces access requirements on a system-wide basis.

A device hosting framework provides hosting for software-implemented logical devices (including peripheral devices bridges) on a computer to expose their services as controlled devices per a peer networking protocol. The device hosting framework encapsulates discovery, description and control protocol operations of the peer networking protocol, which frees the developers of the hosted devices from having to individually implement the peer networking protocol in the hosted devices' software and need implement only the core functionality of the hosted device. The device hosting framework operates as a host supporting device interoperability via the peer networking protocol for multiple hosted devices.