Data processing: software development – installation – and managem – Software upgrading or updating – Plural version management
Reexamination Certificate
1999-08-18
2003-04-08
Morse, Gregory (Department: 2124)
Data processing: software development, installation, and managem
Software upgrading or updating
Plural version management
Reexamination Certificate
active
06546552
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates generally to updating computer programs.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
With the ever increasing use of remote communication and in particular the Internet, new applications have been introduced such as commercial trade over the Internet, electronic supermarkets, distribution of computer products over the Internet, and others.
Both the popularity and availability of access to the Internet for common users have encouraged not only the distribution of products, but also the upgrade and update of the product under question from a remote site, using, to this end, the Internet infra-structure.
Turning to a specific example of computer programs, an old program is installed at a remote client site and is subject to be upgraded to a new program, where the latter includes some modifications as compared to the old program.
In order to catty out the update at the remote client site (through the network), the provider should, preferably, generate a difference result representative of the difference between the old program and the new program, and send the resulting file through the Internet to the remote client site. The client, in turn, invokes appropriate utility, which incorporates the differences in the old program, thereby generating the desired new program at the client site, The specified procedure caries the obvious advantages in that on the one band, the provider does not need to be present at the client site and, on the other hand, only the difference result and not the entire new program is sent to the client. Assuming, for example, that a modified Office '97 package (commercially available from Microsoft Inc. USA) should be sent to clients, since the compressed size of programs of the package occupies ten of Mega-bytes, and, further considering the relatively low throughput of the Internet and the bottleneck of the modem throughput at the client end (say an average of 33,600 bps), it is easy to understand that transmitting the entire new package through the network is practically infeasible.
Normally, the volume of the difference result is significantly smaller than that of the raw new program and, accordingly, sending only the difference result data rather than the entire new program, is more efficient. This notwithstanding, and as will be explained in greater detail below, applying known per se file difference applications (such as techniques utilized by diff utilities of the UNIX operating systems or a similar diff utility of the GNU project from FSF) in order to generate a difference result between the old program and the new program, normally results in a relatively large amount of data, even if the modifications that were introduced to the old program (in order to generate the new program) are very few. Thus, consider, for example, an old program where few new instructions are inserted and few others are deleted in order to bring about the new program. The difference result between, the old program and the new program will not only reveal the inserted and deleted instructions, but also all those entries that jump, jump on condition, call functions, reference to data and possibly others (referred to, collectively, as reference entries—see glossary below) which, by nature, specify a target address (reference) as an integral part of the command. The latter addresses may have been changed due to the fact that some instructions were added and others deleted. It is important to note that the reference entries that are modified are not those that were inserted, and obviously not those that were deleted. In fact, insertion of only one new entry may result in the plurality of altered reference entries which will naturally be reflected in the difference result and obviously will inflate its volume.
It is accordingly appreciated that despite the fact that the actual change between the old and new program is very limited, the resulting file difference is relatively large. The same problem is encountered in other applications, which employ data tables (see Glossary below), that are structured like a program, and are subject to updates in the manner specified.
There is accordingly a need in the art to provide for an efficient tool which will result in significantly smaller volumes of difference results between old programs and new programs, as compared to hitherto known techniques for accomplishing difference result. The proposed tool is useful for various applications including, but not limited to, incremental software updates and version control.
There is yet another need in the art to provide for an efficient tool which will result in significantly smaller volumes of difference results between old data tables and new data tables.
GLOSSARY
There follows a glossary of terms, some of which are conventional and others have been coined:
Data Table—a table of entries, each may have a different size;
Entry—a data fable includes entries, each of which is an addressable unit that contains data;
Address—a number which is uniquely assigned to a single entry by which that entry is accessed; In the following description, the terms entry and address are occasionally used interchangeably.
Reference—a part of the data appearing in an entry in the data table which is used to refer to some other entry from the same data table. A reference can be either an address or a number used to compute an address. Entries that include references are designated also as reference entries.
Label—an abstract notation of an entry which is referred by another entry of the same data table through a reference.
Old Data Table—a data table (or portion of a data table) that is to be updated (possibly from remote site) so as to generate a new data table (or portion of a new data table). Insofar as remote update is concerned, it is normally, although not necessarily, transmitted through a communication network such as the Internet. It should be noted that whilst for convenience of explanation only, the description focuses predominately on the Internet, the invention is by no means bound by this specific example.
As an example, a data table can be an executable program either as a loaded program in machine-memory or as an executable-file. In this example, entries are individual machine instructions of the program or the individual data elements used by the program.
Instructions and data elements of a program may contain addresses to other instructions or data elements and are regarded as references. Such references can be detected by a process of disassembly applied on the program or, if given, by analyzing a relocation table attached to executable programs by link-editors that create them.
Another example of a data table is a group of inter-linked data records stored in an array of bytes where records contain addresses of other data records. The format of the records and the way they are laid out in the array are known, and the analysis and decomposition of such array is possible.
Old program—an example of old data table: a program (or portion of a program) that is to be updated so as to generate a new program (or portion of a program).
It should be further noted that reference to the old program and the new program is made for convenience of explanation only, and encompasses inter alia the upgrade of the old program to the new program (e.g. due to an upgrade in versions), modifications of the old program to the new program, (e.g. due to corrections of bugs in the old program), and changing from a first old program to a second (and possibly different) new program;
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
For convenience of explanation, the invention is described with reference to a specific example of computer programs. The invention is by no means bound by this particular example.
As explained above, applying a known per se file difference utility to an old program and a new program normally results in a relatively large amount of data, even if the modifications that were introduced to the old program (in order to generate the new program) are very few. The present invention is based on the
Chavis John Q.
Fitch Even Tabin & Flannery
Morse Gregory
Red Bend Ltd.
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