Data processing: database and file management or data structures – Database design – Data structure types
Reexamination Certificate
2000-01-12
2003-03-04
Vu, Kim (Department: 2172)
Data processing: database and file management or data structures
Database design
Data structure types
C707S793000, C707S793000, C707S793000, C707S793000, C707S793000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06529899
ABSTRACT:
PARTIAL WAIVER OF COPYRIGHT
All of the material in this patent application is subject to copyright protection under the copyright laws of the United States and of other countries. As of the first effective filing date of the present application, this material is protected as unpublished material. However, permission to copy this material is hereby granted to the extent that the copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent documentation or patent disclosure, as it appears in the United States Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
Not Applicable
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to field of Internet Search Engines, Web browsers, and resource gathering and has special application in situations where these functions are further integrated with post-processing functions applied to the results of searches performed using theses software tools.
2. Description of the Related Art
The invention is related in the general area of Internet Search engine technology. Conventional Internet search engines permit users to search for a wide variety of information on the WWW. There are also domain-specific search engines (such as that exemplified by jCentral, http://www.ibm.com/developer/java) that provide users a more focused search within the desired domain.
Typically a successful search produces a search results page with result items (each usually contain a URL), an abstract, and some additional information about the resource found. A user can use a pointing device (e.g., mouse) to select a result item and request a download of the document. This is typically a manual process, with no existing system providing a predefined method of associating a post-processing application with the search results provided by the Internet search engine.
The prior art with few exceptions has no system or method available to associate tools and/or applications with the results of Internet search results. Web-Based Prior Art
The prior art includes web-based systems that provide a static assignment of web tools and/or services mapped to search results. As an example, jCentral (http://www.ibm.com/developer/java) offers a class visualizer for Java source code or for Java applets.
There exist web sites that provide facilities such as “type in a URL which points to a particular document” and provide static tools such as “check for well-formed character of XML documents” or “draw a graph corresponding to a particular RDF documents”, etc. These functions are not integrated with search engines and also do not provide a choice mechanism to pick tools and/or services. Examples of URLs implementing these functions include http://www.xml.com/xml/pub/tools/ruwf/check.html and http://jigsaw.w3.org:8000/description, and http://www.w3.org/RDF/Implementations/SiRPAC/.
The present invention, however, goes beyond these concepts by acting as a broker for software components (tools and/or services). The user can register their tools and services and these are then automatically integrated into search engine search results pages.
File Extension Based Prior Art
However, it should be noted that a variety of static and/or contextual application/data associations are known in the art. Specifically, the Microsoft® Windows™ operating environment permits association of a file “type” as determined by a filename extension to be associated with a given handling application. The structure of this application association is illustrated in
FIG. 1
, with the modal dialog boxes implementing this functionality illustrated in FIG.
2
.
Referencing
FIG. 1
, an exemplary association of a Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) file is illustrated to show the techniques used by the prior art. In this configuration the tool and/or service association begins by using registration dialog(s) (
0101
) (detailed in
FIG. 2
(
0201
,
0202
,
0203
)) that associate an application such as the KODAK® image previewer KODAKPRV.exe with the “tif” file extension (
0102
). This association is typically stored in a Microsoft® Windows™ Registry (
0103
).
When a file is activated/selected that does not have an associated application for processing, a typical response to this situation is illustrated in the modal dialog box (
0201
) of
FIG. 2
in which the application to be utilized is prompted for by the file manager or other application. In this example, the file extension of ‘XXX’ has yet to be registered in the Microsoft® Windows™ registry, and thus the system prompts for an application to OPEN the file “ABC.XXX”. This method is generally not preferred as it requires that the user select the activation application for each invocation of the file to be processed.
As an example of how this functionality is executed, the filename “ABC.tif” (a Tagged Image Format File having a “tif” extension) may be selected within an application such as the FILE MANAGER (
0105
) and associated with a specific application such as the KODAKPRV.EXE image previewer using the modal dialog box illustrated in
FIG. 2
(
0202
). The application action and/or activation associated with triggering (generally in the form of double-licking a Microsoft® Windows™ file icon) the file is defined in a modal dialog box as typified in
FIG. 2
(
0203
). Referencing
FIG. 1
, it can be seen that the KODAKPRV.exe application (
0104
) is activated by reference to the Microsoft® Windows&ugr; Registry (
0103
), the tool/service executed (
0106
), and the designated file is OPENed for access by the associated application (
0107
) by using the filename “ABC.tif” as a parameter to the tool/service application.
As with other methods of associating filename extensions to application activations, the prior art requires that for each application file the filename extension be properly keyed to permit proper association of the control application for that file type. This is a significant problem in processing data generated by a wide variety of search engines, as this information is generally not tagged with appropriate filename extension information.
Search Engine Prior Art
Referencing
FIG. 3
, the prior art with respect to search engines has traditionally not provided a method to permit the user to dynamic associate post-processing tools with the search results obtained from a web browser. The scope of the post-processing activity has in general been limited to the use of hyperlinks (
0301
) or some form of file extension based application activation methodology.
Accordingly, a need exists to overcome the deficiencies in the prior art and to provide a system and method to permit automatic activation of user-defined applications in response to the Internet search request results. A need exists to provide a system and method to allow a wide variety of service applications and tools to be associated with the results of Internet searches. Moreover, a need exists to permit a user to trigger a given application to post-process the data content of a given URL and to permit tools and/or services to be automatically brokered to users of search engine post-processors.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The invention is related in the general area of Internet Search engine technology. The present invention extends the prior art by providing the user the opportunity to allow search result items to be automatically used as an input for post-processing based on registered tools and/or services. These tools and/or services determine the type of processing to be applied to a search result item. The present invention therefore acts as a broker for tools and/or services. The user can register their tools and/or services with the search engine and make them available for activation by other users that utilize the present invention.
As an exemplary implementation of the present invention, the user would start a query by entering some keywords and submitting the query to a search engine as illustrated in FIG.
4
. This interaction typically
Kraft Reiner
Sundaresan Neelakantan
Fleit Kain Gibbons Gutman & Bongini P.L.
Gibbons Jon A.
Truong Cam-Y T
Vu Kim
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