Data processing: database and file management or data structures – Database design – Data structure types
Reexamination Certificate
1999-04-26
2001-10-16
Shah, Sanjiv (Department: 2172)
Data processing: database and file management or data structures
Database design
Data structure types
C707S793000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06304877
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a computer language for monitoring and controlling devices of a computer network, in particular to a device description file and a separate management application.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
When network management applications are implemented in software, a considerable amount of the device attribute information is typically defined within the source code for each device being managed. When changes are required for a particular device, the source code must be searched, modified, compiled, linked and tested. This process can be time consuming and error prone since a developer must first locate the device attribute information for a device (which may be scattered throughout several thousand lines of source code), make the changes, rebuild the application from sources and then regression test the final product.
Device management applications are typically implemented by describing and manipulating device attributes within the source code for that application. An example of this might be the number of ports of a device or a string representing the name of a module on that device. The technique of hard coding the attributes of a device suffices for small applications that support a small number of devices but it does not scale well for large applications that support many devices and may support many more devices in the future. It also does not scale well as new features are added to a device or firmware. A network management application can grow to be tens of thousands of lines of software. This becomes costly from a maintenance point of view and proves to be time consuming when modifications must be made to a device attribute list or new devices to be managed are added to the system.
It is quite often that string literals are placed within source code. A change to a string literal requires one or more changes to the source code which can be quite tedious for very large applications whose source code is distributed in many libraries. The entire source code control system would have to be scoured for the offending string and the appropriate changes made to correct the application behavior. Furthermore, device attributes such as port count, slot count, software revision functionality is typically hard coded into sources which further increases the maintenance of a software system. In addition to maintenance, the development process is also affected since the application requires building object code, linking and testing the executable.
SUMMARY AND OBJECTS OF THE INVENTION
It is a primary object of the present invention to provide a computer network management application where specific information for the network devices is not stored in the source code of the network application, but in a separate Device Description Language (DDL) file that can be separately created and read when the management application initially executes. The information in the DDL file is preferably static information of the network devices which can not be directly polled from the network device over the network.
This object is accomplished by creating a DDL file providing an abstraction of features of one of the devices of the computer network in a human readable text file. A management application source file is then created for monitoring and controlling the plurality of devices on the network. The management application source file is compiled into a management application executable file without reading information from the DDL file. Execution of the management application executable file includes parsing the DDL file to provide information from the DDL file to the management application. During execution, the management application also polls the one device according to polling features of the device as determined during the parsing of the DDL file.
The information in the DDL file can be abstracted such that many attributes can be described for many network devices. The text file can be parsed, read in by the management application at runtime and the information contained within this text file can be used by the management application at runtime. The grammar of the DDL file uses tokens and attributes to make it both readable to a human and to the management application.
The DDL file has a System Capabilities section describing the physical features of the network devices, which includes such information such as the number and type of filters, portgroups, slotgroups and address groups of the respective network devices. The DDL file also includes a polling process definition section describing the sizing and polling processes supported by the respective network devices. A literal string providing a name of the respective network devices can also be included in the DDL file. A plurality of DDL files can also be provided with each of the plurality of DDL files describing one of the network devices. The network device that is hosting the management application preferably has the DDL file and the management application encoded in memory devices of the network management device.
Each the network device operates using one of a plurality of versions of agent software, and the DDL file includes a plurality of divisions, with each of the division describing features of one of the versions of the agent software. The management application reads agent software version information from the network devices and uses features from a respective division of the DDL file for monitoring and control of the respective network device.
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3Com Corporation
McGlew and Tuttle , P.C.
Shah Sanjiv
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