Graphical association of program icons

Abstract

A system and method for creating and using configuration diagrams for configuring distributed systems. The methods described herein may be used for various types of operations in configuring distributed systems, including creating programs, managing programs in the distributed system, deploying programs to various distributed devices, configuring remote execution or inter-operation of distributed programs, and executing distributed applications. Embodiments of the invention utilize graphical iconic-based techniques for performing the above operations. The configuration diagram may include device icons which represent devices and program icons which represent programs. Device icons and program icons may be associated with each other to accomplish various program creation and deployment operations. Device icons and program icons may also interact with graphical program nodes or icons. Context sensitive device connections and / or program connections are displayed. An asynchronous data flow node may be used to facilitate asynchronous data flow between two graphical programs. The distributed system may also support distributed graphical debugging.

Description

CONTINUATION AND PRIORITY DATA [0001] This application is a divisional of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 123,511 titled “Graphical Association of Program Icons” filed Apr. 16, 2002, whose inventors are Jeffrey L. Kodosky, Darshan Shah, and Steven W. Rogers, which claims benefit of priority of U.S. provisional application Ser. No. 60 / 312,242 titled “System and Method for Graphically Creating, Deploying and Executing Programs in a Distributed System” filed Aug. 14, 2001, whose inventors are Jeffrey L. Kodosky, Darshan Shah and Steven W. Rogers.FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0002] The present invention relates to the fields of system design and distributed software programming and deployment, and more particularly to a system and method for enabling a user to more easily specify or create distributed systems and / or applications utilizing a configuration diagram. The present invention further relates to techniques for graphically distributing or deploying programs among a plurality of dif...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0009] In one embodiment, the user may create or assemble a configuration diagram on a computer system (e.g., the “main” computer system) representing a system, e.g., a distributed system. The configuration diagram may include device icons that represent devices in the system. The device icons preferably have an appearance which corresponds to the device they represent. This allows the viewer to easily view and consider what devices are present in the system. Thus, in a system which comprises two or more devices coupled to each other, such as through a network, a serial or parallel bus, or through wireless means, etc., the configuration diagram may include a device icon for each of the devices present in the system. The user may at least partially create or assemble the configuration diagram, or the configuration diagram may at least partially be automatically or programmatically created, or both.

[0023] The operation of associating program icons with device icons (or other program icons) in the configuration diagram may operate to deploy, or cause to be deployed, the respective programs on the various devices which correspond to the device icons. For example, if the user selects a first program icon and associates (e.g., drags and drops) this first program icon on to a first device icon which represents a first device, and the user optionally selects “apply”, this may operate to deploy a first program corresponding to that first program icon on to the first device which corresponds to that first device icon. This provides a greatly simplified mechanism for deploying programs on various devices in a distributed system.

[0037] Therefore, as described above, where a program icon on the configuration diagram corresponds to a graphical program, the user may perform various additional operations. As another example, if the user desires to choose a specific location in the graphical program to have a call made to a remote device, this may be performed graphically within the graphical program. In other words, if the user desires to choose a particular function node in the graphical program to make a call or invoke a program on a remote device (e.g., different computer), this may be easily performed using the block diagram of the graphical program and graphical association techniques described herein. Additionally, as described above, if the user desires to have one or more nodes or sub-programs in the graphical program execute on a remote device, this may also be performed easily using the graphical association techniques described herein. The user may further incorporate device icons or program icons directly into a desired location in a graphical program using the graphical association techniques described herein. This provides a simple graphical mechanism for distributing functionality of a graphical program among various devices in a system. The user can simply drag and drop nodes in the graphical program on to various device icons to distribute the functionality represented by these nodes among the various devices.

Problems solved by technology

As a result, in many cases it is extremely difficult for a user to be able to create various computer programs and distribute these programs among devices in a distributed system.

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