Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Distributed data processing – Processing agent
Reexamination Certificate
1998-04-28
2001-11-20
Barot, Bharat (Department: 2154)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Distributed data processing
Processing agent
C709S204000, C709S220000, C709S241000, C709S241000, C707S793000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06321249
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of Invention
The invention relates to the handling and storing of system configuration attributes. In particular, this invention is directed to enabling dynamic configuration through the storage and modification of configuration information as attributes of a server object in a client-server system.
2. Description of Related Art
Typically, system configuration is a static process, whereby the configuration is changed and the system must be restarted. In some systems, registry values are often used to store system configuration information. When one of these values changes, the network (or system) process must be shut down and restarted for the changes to take effect.
Similarly, as shown in
FIG. 1
, on UNIX, for example, configuration files
120
(typically found in /etc/*.conf) are often used to store configuration information for the network
110
and various system elements (or infrastructure facilities)
130
,
140
,
150
in the system
100
. When one of these system elements
130
,
140
,
150
changes its configuration, the corresponding configuration file
120
is edited and the system
100
must have processes restarted for the changes to take effect.
This static nature of system configurations is because configuration information is only accessed at system startup. Configuration files
120
and registry entries are not suitable for dynamic configuration capabilities, because it is difficult to know when a change has occurred. Typically, information would need to be polled (reread) every single time the information is needed, if true dynamic configuration were to be implemented. However, because of the frequency this information is required, it is typically prohibitive to do this type of polling.
In an object-based client-server system, the client can set configuration attributes on the server object to store and modify configuration information. However, lowlevel infrastructure facilities (e.g., naming, security, file access, etc.) often require configuration information and the object code is typically built on top of this infrastructure. To avoid circular dependencies and maintain proper layering, the infrastructure facilities cannot use or be dependent upon the object code. Hence, the infrastructure code cannot access the server object to obtain the necessary configuration attributes.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
This invention provides a method and apparatus to enable other system elements to obtain configuration attribute modifications from a print management system. An attribute broker may provide two methods, register and advertise, to facilitate communication of configuration changes. The register method may be called by other system elements to indicate an interest in a particular attribute. In registering interest in an attribute, the system element may provide a callback function. The attribute broker may maintain a list of all attributes that have been registered and may keep the set of callback functions for each registered attribute.
Whenever a server configuration attribute is modified, the server object may use the advertise method to provide the attribute information to any system element that has registered interest in that attribute. Upon receiving the advertisement of an attribute, the attribute broker may check to see if any callback functions have been registered for that attribute. If so, the attribute broker may call each callback function. The callback function implementation may then store the configuration attribute value in a virtual memory to be used by the system elements whenever required.
These and other features and advantages of this invention are described in or are apparent from the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments.
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Barot Bharat
Oliff & Berridg,e PLC
Xerox Corporation
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