Hyper media object management

Details Hyper media object management Hyper media object management

1996-07-11

2001-06-26

Dinh, Dung C. (Department: 2153)

Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput

Computer-to-computer data routing

Least weight routing

C709S217000, C707S793000, C707S793000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06253254

ABSTRACT:

APPENDICES
Appendix A, which is herein incorporated by reference, shows examples of formats used to communicate between a server and an object manager.
Appendix B, which is herein incorporated by reference, shows examples of an ORM Server Support library API (Application Program Interface) supported by the object manager to access objects in a preferred embodiment of the present invention.
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This application relates to object oriented programming and, in particular, to management of distributed objects via the World Wide Web.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The past several years have seen an explosive growth of the use of distributed objects. Now, a single system may be composed of objects obtained from different vendors and having different interfaces. Such objects are called “heterogeneous objects.” Thus, a system can be formed of a large and rapidly changing number of heterogeneous objects. Such a system requires a flexible and adaptive approach for system and application management. Conventionally, a heterogeneous system is managed by way of object-specific presentation facilities, i.e., by way of a user front-end that was written for each type of heterogeneous object. Such an approach is, however, too expensive in both development time and maintenance and administrative costs. In addition, conventional object management is often achieved through a single management center. Use of a single center is not efficient when a large number of objects need to be managed.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention overcomes the problems and disadvantages of the prior art by using a hypermedia approach to object management. In this approach, each object is akin to a hypermedia document. The described embodiment of the present invention uses the World Wide Web hypermedia system. In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, a user initializes browser software that allows the user to browse and change various attributes of objects in the system. The browser communicates with a server that includes an http adapter and a gateway. The gateway can access objects in the system and generate HTML code in accordance with the objects.
A described embodiment of the present invention uses hierarchical tree-oriented objects. In a first embodiment, these objects are “self-describing”(also called “introspective”). The server queries the objects in response to the queries from the browser and each queried object responds with information about itself. In another preferred embodiment, the server initiates queries of the objects and retains this information for use in responding to later queries from the browser.
In accordance with the purpose of the invention, as embodied and broadly described herein the invention is a system for managing objects, including a first server, comprising: a first receiver portion configured to receive a request in a hypermedia format; a first translator portion configured to convert the hypermedia request to an object request; a sender portion configured to send the object request to an object manager; a second receiver portion configured to receive a response from the object manager; and a second translator portion configured to convert the object manager response to the hypermedia format.
In further accordance with the purpose of this invention, as embodied and broadly described herein the invention is a method for browsing objects, where a browser communicates with a server, comprising the steps, performed by the browser, of: sending an initial URL to the server; receiving first data from the server, where the first data specifies an object corresponding to the URL; sending user-entered data associated with the object to the server; and receiving second data from the server, where the second data specifies a second object corresponding to the user-entered data.
Advantages of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows and in part will be obvious from the description or may be learned by practice of the invention. The advantages of the invention will be realized and attained by means of the elements and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims and equivalents.


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Article by V. Jagannathan et al., entitled “Collaborative Infrastructures Using the WWW and CORBA-Based Environments” published by Proceedings of Wet Ice on Jun. 19, 1996 pp. 292-297.

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