System, apparatus and method for providing partial presence notifications

Abstract

A computer-implemented apparatus and method for communicating partial notifications relating to a presentity's presence information. The communication may be effected between presence servers and terminals coupled to the presence servers via a network. At least one presentity is identified to which a terminal has requested presence services. A presence document is created, where the presence document includes presence information corresponding to the presentity. The presence information is configured as partial presence information comprising less than a total of the presence information available for the presentity. The presence document having the partial presence information is communicated to the terminal requesting the presence information.

Description

[0001]This application is a continuation of prior application Ser. No. 10 / 196,327, filed Jul. 16, 2002, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]This invention relates in general to communications, and more particularly to a system and method for communicating partial notifications relating to a presentity's presence information.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]Mobile and landline / wireline computing devices have in recent years become a valuable tool in day-to-day communications. Desktop computers, workstations, and other wireline computers currently allow users to communicate via e-mail, video conferencing, and instant messaging (IM) to name a few communication applications. Mobile devices, such as mobile telephones, handheld computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), etc. also assist in day-to-day communication. Mobile / wireless telephones have conventionally served as voice communication devices, but through technolog...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0015]In accordance with another embodiment of the invention, a computer-implemented method is provided, where a computer-readable medium has stored thereon computer-executable instructions for communicating presence information between presence servers and terminals coupled to the presence servers via a network. The instructions may be executed to communicate presence information between presence servers and terminals coupled to the presence servers via a network, and to identify at least one presentity to which a terminal has requested presence services. The instructions facilitate creation of a presence document, where the presence document includes presence information corresponding to the presentity, and where the presence information is configured as partial presence information comprising less than a total of the presence information available for the presentity. The instructions further facilitate communicating the presence document having the partial presence information to the terminal requesting the presence information.

[0016]In accordance with another embodiment of the invention, a computer-implemented method is provided, where a computer-readable medium has stored thereon computer-executable instructions for notifying client terminals of presence information. The instructions may be executed to create a presence document for use by at least one terminal requesting presence information regarding a presentity, where the creation of the presence document involves creating at least one tuple that includes a version value indicating a version of the tuple relative to previous versions of the tuple. The instructions facilitate association of presence information with the tuple, where the presence information includes a subset of the presentity's complete set of presence information. The instructions facilitate transmission of the presence document to the client terminal requesting the presence information, where the version value provided via the tuple is compared to a current version value stored on the client terminal. The instructions direct the client terminal to update presence information associated with the tuple, if the version value provided via the tuple indicates new presence information is available for that tuple.

Problems solved by technology

In some environments, such as wireless environments, sending all of the presence information when only some portion of the information has changed may not be a favorable option, as the available bandwidth is typically significantly lower than in a fixed Internet environment.

Existing presence specifications do not provide any indication whether some data received earlier has become invalid.

This can occur where, for example, watchers change filtering information, presentities change presence authorization levels, and presence attributes become unavailable on networks.

Furthermore, the existing specifications do not provide versioning information, which is needed if presence information is delivered using multiple application protocols, because protocol-specific versioning mechanisms cannot be used in such instances.

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