Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Remote data accessing – Using interconnected networks
Reexamination Certificate
1999-06-18
2003-09-02
Etienne, Ario (Department: 2155)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Remote data accessing
Using interconnected networks
C709S216000, C714S013000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06615250
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to an agent for communication between a manager and at least one resource of a data processing system. The manager is also known as an administrative platform. The invention also relates to a library of tools for creating an agent. An agent of this type enables a manager of a data processing system to control, monitor and evaluate computing resources remotely. The invention also relates to a process for communicating between a manager and a resource using an agent that enables a manager of a data processing system to remotely control, monitor and evaluate computer resources.
DESCRIPTION OF RELATED ART
It is known in the prior art that a distributed system is constituted by computing resources, which may be mainframes, workstations, bridges, routers, printers, operating systems, applications, etc. In short, any entity of the data processing system is considered to be a resource.
To administrate or manage a distributed system is to manage all of its resources. An administrative platform (or manager), which must have as complete, accurate and detailed a view as possible of the resources it has to manage, is used for this purpose.
This view of a resource is made possible by a model of the resource in question. The modeling of a resource is based, in particular, on an approach and a structuring of objects organized into a tree of management information. The model of a resource is managed by an agent capable of instantiating these objects with the help of information from the resource or from the administrative platform.
Because of the specificity of each resource, each agent must be created individually for each of its resources, and must contain the expertise for communicating with the manager, also called known as the protocol core, and the expertise of the system to be managed.
The known methods for developing an agent of the prior art consist of a programmer's designing, in their entirety, the expertise for communicating with the manager and the expertise for communicating with the resource to be managed. In its development, the programmer is confronted with two types of problems, those linked to the protocol for communicating with the manager and those linked to the development of the expertise of the resource to be managed. Furthermore, these two types of expertise are not separated in the agent, resulting in problems in terms of performance, robustness, code quality, reliability, and development time for the agent, since the programmer is confronted with two problems at once and therefore, for each agent developed, the programmer must systematically develop the protocol core without being able to reuse it.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Hence, the first object of the present invention is to eliminate the drawbacks of the prior art by offering a simpler, faster agent, designed so as to be adaptable to different contexts and having great reliability.
This object is achieved by the fact that the agent for communication between a manager and at least one resource of a data processing system comprises a protocol core created automatically from a formalized description of the resource, this core, once created, comprising in compiled form a first interface for communicating with the manager and a model of the resource comprising the values of the instances of the resource, these values being accessible by the manager through the first communication interface.
According to another characteristic, the agent comprises, in a second interface, at least one method for accessing the resource for communicating with the protocol core and updating and/or reading at least one value of an instance of the model of the resource specific to the method, and for responding to requests from the core related to the updating of at least one instance value of the model of the resource.
According to another characteristic, the resource being modeled in the form of attributes, access to each attribute managed by the agent can be obtained in either a “direct” mode or a “signal” mode, defined in a configuration file <agt>.confget.
According to another characteristic, when the access method uses sockets interface primitives, the configuration file includes an identifier of the method that is associated with the instance.
According to another characteristic, the formalized description of the resource is in the form of an MIB (management information base).
According to another characteristic, the model of the resource comprises a sorted database constructed from the formalized description of the resource.
According to another characteristic, the protocol core includes a compiled file containing sorted data for the management of objects specific to its operation.
According to another characteristic, the communication between the manager and the protocol core takes place in accordance with the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) ASN1 (Abstract Syntax Notation One), by means of verbs that allow the operations for reading an instance (get), for reading the next instance (get-next) and for modifying an instance (set).
According to another characteristic, when the manager sends, in the same request, an operation for a modification (SET) on a list of instances, the core transmits instance modification messages (SET) one by one to the methods corresponding to each instance, the last message for modifying the last instance being transmitted by a modification message (SETLAST) indicating that it is the last instance in the list; as long as the method has not received the last message from the core, the modifications of the instances are stored, and as soon as the last message is received by the method, if all the modifications of the instances are possible, they are all validated, whereas if not, they are all cancelled.
According to another characteristic, the communication between each access method and the core takes place through online TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) communication software.
According to another characteristic, the communication between the protocol core and at least one method for accessing the resources in the “sockets” mode takes place through two TCP/IP connection processes that communicate through sockets executable primitives, making it possible to perform the operations for reading the value of an instance (readInstSock), for modifying an instance (writeInstSock), for reading the next instance (readNextSock), for writing a new instance, and for deleting an instance.
According to another characteristic, the communication between two methods (
12
) of access to the resource (
30
) in the “sockets” mode is established by calling a function (notifyMeth).
According to another characteristic, the communication between the protocol core and at least one method for accessing the resources in the “direct” mode” takes place through named pipes and executable primitives, making it possible to perform the operations for reading the value of an instance (readInstDirect), for modifying an instance (writeInstDirect), for reading the next instance (readNextDirect), for writing a new instance, and for deleting an instance.
According to another characteristic, the structure of each message related to an operation on an instance of the resource, and constructed by the protocol core of the agent to be sent to at least one method, comprises a field for identifying the instance, a field corresponding to the value of the instance, a code identifying the operation to be executed and a return code indicating whether the operation has been performed.
According to another characteristic, the manager and/or the method can create an instance in the model of the resource managed by the core, by means of a request sent to the core containing the verb (SET) for an instance modification on an instance that is no-existent in the model, the reception of this request by the core resulting in the creation of the instance.
According to another characteristic, the manager and/or the method can delete an instance in the model of the resou
Brunet Jean
Sedrati Gérald
Dinh Khanh Quang
Etienne Ario
Kurdyla Ronald H.
Navon Jeffrey M.
Thomson Licensing S.A.
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