Client-Server Functionality Adaptation via Pre-configured Property Checks
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional authorization checks and Access Control Lists (ACLs) in client/server infrastructures are inflexible and require tedious validation, failing to adequately consider client and server capabilities, preferences, and environment, leading to forgotten characterizations and inefficient functionality adaptation.
Innovation Solution
A computer system that performs an extended availability check using pre-configured properties of clients, servers, and requested functionalities, employing a four-pass filter with intersection and non-intersection rules to determine compatible functionality, allowing for flexible adaptation without code changes, and enabling execution of only compatible functionality.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If conventional ACLs are used for authorization checks, then security validation is provided, but the system lacks flexibility and requires tedious manual validation
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by pre-configuring properties for clients, servers, and functionalities before runtime. These pre-configured properties include capabilities, preferences, and environmental characteristics. During runtime, the system automatically retrieves and compares these pre-configured properties to determine compatibility, eliminating the need for tedious manual validation while maintaining security.
Solution Approach 2:
The system enables self-service by allowing the availability check mechanism to automatically determine compatibility between clients and servers based on pre-configured properties. The system serves itself by autonomously performing the validation task without requiring manual intervention, thus reducing operational burden while providing flexible adaptation to different client-server combinations.
2Reliability
If manual configuration of client-server capabilities is performed, then accurate capability characterization is achieved, but the system becomes complex and characterizations are easily forgotten
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary configuration of capabilities, preferences, and environmental properties for all clients, servers, and functionalities. This pre-configuration phase captures accurate capability characterizations in a structured format that can be automatically retrieved and compared during runtime, ensuring reliability without requiring complex manual management during operation.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements a universal availability check mechanism that handles multiple types of properties (capabilities, preferences, environmental characteristics) through a single unified process. This multi-functional approach allows the same mechanism to validate different aspects of client-server compatibility, reducing overall system complexity while maintaining accurate characterization.
3Manufacturing precision
If extensive property checks are performed to ensure compatibility, then functionality execution accuracy is improved, but processing time increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary configuration of all relevant properties during system setup or deployment phases. This pre-processing stores capability, preference, and environmental information in an accessible format, allowing rapid retrieval and comparison during runtime availability checks, thus maintaining high accuracy while reducing processing time.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs a comprehensive availability check that evaluates multiple property dimensions (capabilities, preferences, environmental characteristics) simultaneously. By checking all relevant properties in a unified process rather than sequentially, the system achieves thorough compatibility determination without proportionally increasing processing time, as the checks are performed in parallel or integrated fashion.
Data Source
AI summary
A functionality is adapted to a client and server combination. Responsive to a request of a client for a functionality, pre-configured properties of the client, requested functionality, and a server on which the functionality is run are retrieved. An availability check is performed, based on the retrieved pre-configured properties of the client, server, and requested functionality, to eliminate properties of the functionality which are not capable of functioning on the client-server combination. The result of the availability check is provided as a set of properties which is available for the requested functionality to run on the client-server combination. The pre-configured properties define different property types, property values of the different property types, functionality values for each property value, and rules that instruct a processor how to perform the availability check based on the property types, the property values and the functionality values.