Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system – Display driving control circuitry – Controlling the condition of display elements
Reexamination Certificate
1998-08-05
2001-07-10
Bayerl, Raymond J. (Department: 2173)
Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system
Display driving control circuitry
Controlling the condition of display elements
C711S100000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06259447
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to an information processing method and, more particularly, to an automatic execution method of an application.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
From the latter half of the 1970s to the 1990s, enterprises have built on-line applications executed by operation from character display terminals (IBM 3270s, Fujitsu 6650s, Hitachi 560/20s, or the like) for computerizing their key business services. While operational environments are rapidly changing in the recent years as evidenced by extensive use of GUI, development of the Web and the introduction of Mobile equipment, a majority of the host applications for key business services have not been substantially changed except for replacement of its character display terminals with PC emulators. This is because these applications are extremely large so that efforts of their modification are limited to maintenance and changes of business services rather than adapting them for changes of the operational environment.
By way of example, in a telephone ordering system of the mail-order industry, a member may use a push-button telephone to input his/her member number, a commodity number and the ordered number of the commodity, but a software application may not be able to handle these inputs. In such a case, the operator who receives the telephone call is required to reenter the inputted data into a host from his/her terminal.
While many of these processing procedures are fixed, there has been situations where execeptional screens occure due to disturbances caused by the host machine, or a communication line or the like, thereby requiring recovery by an operator. Many of the exceptional screens are generated in common with a plurality of host applications.
Providing an automatic execution program of a host application that is not capable of handling such exceptional screens, tends to continue potentially impossible processing even after the outputting of an exceptional screen. This would lead to increase of transactions to a host machines, thereby causing a busy condition of a host machine resource or a communication line to occur. Also, if a user is not informed of any cause of such impossible processing, he/she may apt to repeat the processing haphazardly and, thus, the busy condition of a host machine resource or a communication line would worsen.
On the other hand, as seen form the nature of an application that requires at shortage of commodities in stock to ship to the stocked commodities and to order the remaining commodities from a manufacturing section, there has been such processing that necessitates dynamically changing the involved processing procedures in accordance with content of data received from a host machine.
For this reason, what is strongly needed in the art is an automatic execution program that is capable of handling an exceptional processing procedure by of a client without changing a host application.
In order to improve client operation without changing host application, it may be required to automatically execute keyboard operations and to read necessary information from a screen by means of a program that uses “EHLLAPI” (trademark of IBM Corp.) of 3270 emulator (trademark of IBM Corp.). However, this approach requires that a host application program must be accurately understood and that an automatic execution program must be separately developed for each application.
This invention provides a procedure definition environment, enabling elimination of such program development and to access an existing host application from a new client application.
It is also known in the art to access a host machine from a client via a server machine and to obtain an output value, as disclosed in “Mobile Computer Agent, VersionJ1.1”, Version 3, October 1996, IBM Japan (From No. SC88-3162-00). However, this technique is subject to a requirement that leads to substantial program development on the user side that necessarily casts burdens on the user to have a high level knowledge of programming to develop a program on his/her initiative. Further, this technique uses significants resources on the client side and it also requires to change a program content of an agent contained on the client side.
Further, it is known in the field of test tools or the like to record procedures and to re-execute the same, as disclosed in “VisualAge Test for OS/2, User's Guide for Autotest Performer, Version 1.0”. March 1996, IBM Corp. (Form No. SC88-3149-00). However, this technique does not enable the provision of a value of an output variable to an application on the client side, nor dies it enable identification of specified exceptional screen or to take an operational procedure associated with such an exceptional screen.
It is, therefore, and object of this invention to provide an automatic execution system that is capable of handling an exceptional operation without changing or adapting an application program to be automatically executed.
It is another object of this invention to record an operational procedure without developing an automatic execution program for each application program to be automatically executed, thereby enabling the setting up of automatic execution of an application without requiring high level knowledge of programming.
It is another object of this invention to record an operational procedure without developing an automatic execution program for each application program to be automatically executed, thereby facilitating the setup of automatic execution of an application.
It is another object of this invention to provide an automatic execution system that is capable of dynamically changing an execution procedure in accordance with the nature of an application.
It is another object of this invention to provide an automatic execution system that is capable of dynamically changing an application to be executed in accordance with a user's request.
It is another object of this invention to provide an automatic execution system that is capable of automatically recovering fixed types of errors.
It is another object of this invention to provide an automatic execution system that is capable of reducing a gross amount of transactions occurring in a system.
It is another object of this invention to provide an automatic execution system that is capable of automatically executing an application even where a client machine is provided with a small storage capacity.
It is another object of this invention to provide an automatic execution system that reduces inputs required at a client machine.
It is another object of this invention to provide an automatic execution system that reduces the amount of data to be communicated between a client machine and a server machine.
It is another object of this invention to provide an automatic execution system that is capable of rapidly providing a processed result to a user.
It is another object of this invention to provide a system that is capable of automatically executing an application without depending on a platform of a client machine.
Means for Solving the Problems
For each screen appearing in an application to be automatically executed, information for specifying the screen (e.g., a screen number or a characteristic message) is recorded, whereby it is compared with another at the time of re-execution to confirm that the automatic execution is being carried out in accordance with a predetermined procedure. Also, in preparation for appearance of an exceptional screen, an action procedure (e.g., PA2 KEY) for each screen is recorded.
In accordance with an aspect of this invention, there is provided software for recording an operational procedure of a keyboard or screen designation of an input/output variable and, thus, an operation is capable of recording screen specifying data, input variable data and output variable data while an application is being executed.
In one aspect of this invention, there is provided an information processing that is executed based on a plurality of normal processing screen specifying data items that are stored in an o
Kanetake Mitsugu
Ohkada Akira
Okada Akira
Bayerl Raymond J.
Hailu Tadesse
International Business Machines - Corporation
Tassinard, Jr. Robert P.
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